Shelter
by DarkHorseBlueSky
Summary: General Aventurine hadn't asked for the pearl. Granted, she hadn't asked for ANY of this. Her pearl had appeared from an abyss, blessed her to the stars and back, and kept the expiration date in a top secret file — like her success, her reward, and this awful luck that was her only saving grace. [please drown me in corn flakes]
1. Dance of the Knights

**i am posting this story out of unmitigated spite**

* * *

 **I. Dance of the Knights — Sergei Prokofiev**

* * *

The sun never set on Crystal System 33 Ferrade. It was an imperfect planet in a perfect orbit, in its sunny hemisphere with mild winters and pleasurable summers, but weather didn't matter much when, except for its few intelligent inhabitants, all native life forms were silicon based. They came in strange shades of greyish-white if they lived on the sunny side, in inky black on the shadowed side. That was just the way of things — adaptation to something greater.

This "something greater" was Ferrade's core, because Ferrade was a unique planet. In its formation (however THAT happened, do I look like a nesosilicate?), the planet's normal mantle and crust had formed around a teardrop- or hourglass-shaped core of 90% pure hematite, 9% carbon, and 1%...other. Because of this abnormally shaped magnetic core, the larger portion of hematite always pulled towards the local star (which was theorized to also be magnetic). Thus the planet revolved without rotation. The bigger bulb of the teardrop protruded from the crust of the sunny side of Ferrade as a very wide shieldlike hill, though if you were to walk on top of it, the only way you could tell it from any other ground protrusion was if the sun was directly above you and, forty feet below the surface, you found a curiously smooth surface in place of a planet's normal bedrock.

It was theorized by an olivine that Ferrade's core would one day break free of its crust, field, and orbit and rocket towards the sun where it would burn up and destroy all inhabitants. Since it had somehow stayed around for five thousand years without doing anything of the like, but also since nothing said that it _wouldn't_ , 33 Ferrade became an obscure recreational hub for retired citizens, a correction facility for Stage I corrupted gems, and a tourist trap for people who didn't understand physics.

There was no one who hated Ferrade more than one of these residents, the first of my constituents, an aventurine strategist on a well-earned but much too long break.

It wasn't as if she could do anything about it, however, because all furloughs were prearranged and a gem would be taken there kicking and screaming if she had to be. And it wasn't that Aventurine was ungrateful. The war on Crystal System Earth had taken its toll on everyone, including her; in fact, the second she had knelt before her Diamond, her physical form involuntarily collapsed into her gem. The indignity. Nevertheless, in honor of her service, Yellow Diamond had assigned her to a furlough on Crystal System 33 Ferrade, in a solitary pod between a gem settlement and the core's hill, and with the prospect of a hundred years' rest stretching before her.

A hundred years on an unstable planet where the sun never set. Anyone would hate it after a while, in my opinion, and that makes sense, because a large part of me learned it firsthand.

That large part of me — our Aventurine — had been on Ferrade just a common day and a half before her dislike took root.

It wasn't like she had anything to do, anyway. The nearby gem settlement was a money vortex for the unlucky and a money torrent for the lucky, and being an aventurine, she had both luck and money already. Because of this she couldn't care. As a general rule, Aventurine didn't care about many things at all, which was part of the reason why she was such a successful tactician. With no emotional instability to rock her calculations, her end goals consisted of literally two things: success and then being able to go home and sleep. That aside, Aventurine was on holiday and unless something promised immediate gratification, she was reluctant to expound the energy to partake in it.

Long story short: the reason Aventurine did not leave her assigned vacation pod for six weeks was because she couldn't care enough to do literally anything else. No wonder she was bored.

I have just realized that to call her temporary residence a pod does a disservice to the spectacular architecture of the place. A pod wasn't what it _was,_ just what it was called. In reality, Aventurine's holiday residence was a private expanse of about ten acres, with the pod itself in the very center looming over the uncultivated lands as a stone temple to no Ferrade had no precipitation besides fist-sized hail once every three years, the only doors were gauzy curtains between the white pillars, allowing for eternal golden sunlight to filter into the building's open spaces. In her time on Earth, Aventurine had grown fond of its twenty four-hour days, so whenever she felt like it should be night, she could simply press a button and dark glass panes would roll down over the windows. Open courtyards within the house offered places to relax, eat, practice sparring, or swim in round pools with water clearer than the Diamonds' sacred cores.

It was a beautiful place, but to a gem straight out of a war, it might as well have been a bubble.

On her sixth "week" in her pod, Aventurine decided wisely to spend an entire three days asleep. She couldn't remember when she decided to like sleeping; it had just happened, and she happened to enjoy it too. Already she had dedicated a certain room of her residence just to sleep — it had a quartz-sized couch, a great number of gold-tasseled pillows, and Ferradian potted shade palms bent lazily over the place of reclining. (The shade palms were a blessing and a curse. Once she woke up with a leaf in her mouth.) Initially it was actually rather aesthetically pleasing, but as she became attached to the couch, the room became more disheveled until a dozen pieces of dinnerware teetered on the small table and certain pillows claimed permanent ownership of floor space.

After the aforementioned nap (I do get very distracted, don't I?), Aventurine awoke to a beautiful, sunny morning. That was a joke because it is always sunny on Ferrade. Ha, ha. Aventurine had certainly not been laughing. She could sleep for a very long time but something had awoken her — a something which she would normally try to avoid at all costs, but which now had the effect of food for a starving man. A communicator call. How long had it been since she had partaken in social conversation? Ah, right. Six weeks. By stars it was boring here.

Before doing anything, Aventurine always made sure to be properly groomed — you could hardly be respected while looking like a Kindergarten runt — and as she swung her bare feet off the side of her couch, she closed her eyes and did a quick cosmetic onceover. Her thick pale hair glowed as she removed the knots and tangles, leaving it to fall over her muscular shoulders; while hardly thinking, she exchanged her loose tunic for the snug, aqua-green uniform of a quartz soldier under the command of Yellow Diamond. Using a piece of soft cloth she kept by her bedside, Aventurine reached down to her left foot and gently rubbed the smooth surface of her gem, before allowing stiff combat boots to appear on her feet. There was no real point to the uniform. But it felt nice to look nice, even if she was off-duty, especially if someone would be talking to her.

Her sole connection with Homeworld rested in the room adjacent to her sleeping chambers, the control room, where Aventurine could manipulate all the functions of this minimalist vacation home (one of which could form a spherical shield and lift the entire ten acres of grounds into space). It was too bad that she didn't know how half of them worked. Pushing past a decorative plant that the moron architects had placed halfway in front of the door, Aventurine strode into the room and dropped herself into the high backed office chair.

The common communicator was round, unlike the direct Diamond lines, and when it blinked, it was a neutral green-grey. She twisted it to activate it, idly letting it fall out of her hands and levitate above the control panel, where a white screen expanded and washed the room with a colder, harsher glow. A single figure stood in its light.

She was tall and thin with a prominent nose, like a pearl, but her wavy, iridescent hair flowed long and trailed behind her with the trains of her rich silken robes. Her pale face possessed none of the softness of a pearl's; her skin was strained and marked with mortal signs of old age. When her voluminous white sleeve fell back, Aventurine saw that the nails of her skeletal hand were adorned with something that shimmered in the light.

"Aventurine...Facet 1S7K, Cut 3YA," said the iridescent figure. Her lidded, luminous eyes traveled once down Aventurine's muscled body and in response, the quartz felt herself instinctively stiffen. After a pause the figure added, "General."

"Mother of Pearl," Aventurine responded, allowing herself into a more relaxed pose on the chair. "What do you want? This is _my_ time."

With a flick of her sharp wrist, the Mother pulled up a screen from her own control panel and looked disinterestedly at it. "Your time unconscious in a tropic wasteland," she responded. "I forgot that your duties could be so momentous."

"Sarcasm's the lowest form of wit."

"That quote originated from sarcasm and I can't care less about your time. If you wanted a quick transaction, I could have redirected you to a common cultivator's."

Aventurine rubbed her head. "What in the blazing blue stars are you talking about?"

The Mother's gaze snapped back towards her, the judgment in it just as acid across seventeen light-years. "I've told you before and I'll say it only once more: your order is almost ready. If you wish to take her home fresh from the batch, you need to leave Ferrade within the standard date. I will not be held accountable for any actions of your order after her pick up date has expired."

The torrent of official-sounding words finally knocked the memory back into Aventurine's head — she owned a pearl now, didn't she? In addition to the amazing vacation, Yellow Diamond had gifted her with a pearl of her choice, paid in part by government funds. In all honesty, Aventurine wondered if those funds could have gone somewhere else rather than a tailored personal servant, but peer pressure and apathy won over and she must have agreed somewhere along the line. That was just a thing with Aventurine I guess — she wouldn't like something, then she would see that nothing bad was really meant by it, get too tired of fighting it, and cave in favor of pursuing more important things. Then she'd forget.

"Right, right…" She wondered what kind of pearl she had chosen. A green one, probably — to match her own smooth, deep green gem and skin. But had she settled on a regular hand servant or...a special type? How long ago had she agreed to this? A year or so? "Where am I...going again?"

With a drawn-out sigh, the Mother sent the coordinates over the line and rubbed her temples. "I have worked with quartzes, corundums, even Diamonds for thousands of years," she stated, "and I have never found a more socially inept gem than an aventurine."

"I like you too, Nacre," Aventurine scowled. She wondered if she could ask for her order form, just to check what she had gotten, but that would just reinforce the idea that she was socially inept. A pearl was a status symbol and a quartz with any sense at all would keep track of her status symbol, because her place on the social hierarchy could be at stake.

The less interested part of Aventurine provided a constant internal dialogue about punching things.

"That's fine then. I'll be there," she said instead. The Mother of Pearls stuck up her sharp nose in response.

"I hope you will." At that she closed the connection.

For a while, Aventurine just sat without moving, without a sound in her barren palace other than the distant, constant bubbling of a courtyard fountain. Maybe it really was for the best that she would have a pearl. Nacre was right, she _was_ socially inept; she'd never keep this up for a century alone. She hadn't left her pod for...stars knew how long. Her sleeping quarters were a mess. Her yard was a wasteland. As much as Aventurine disliked work, she liked being busy, most of all in the military, with their concrete schedules and formations to follow. When she was on duty, she would remember to take care of her physical form and do productive things.

But vacation was vegetation. If there was someone in the house with her, then maybe she might be better about herself. Yes...yes, a pearl was good. Even the thought of one made her feel as if she should do something beneficial to society — now when had the Mother said she should leave again?

After a quick bite to eat (gem vessels normally did not have culinary services unless they were privately tailored for a gem who would pay for them), Aventurine shapeshifted a traveling cloak and went outside. In a wing of her residence there was a garage of sorts, housing a fast little cruiser whose matte silver surface glowed in Ferrade's sun. She'd never used it, didn't know how mostly. At least it wasn't unlike a military-grade speeder, same basic controls and calibration that was just a bit less fine tuned. One attempt ended with her on the ground and the cruiser magnetically sealed to the ceiling, but we're not supposed to talk about that.

In time, Aventurine had somehow handled the cruiser and she was off, gliding across Ferrade's nondescript terrain as its sun glared down from an eternal zenith. No true plant life grew here because of the nitrogen atmosphere, but a few inorganic accumulations of fine fibers made tangled, mile-wide white mats on the wavy grey stone ground. Behind her, the protruding core of the planet grew only vaguely smaller as she traveled, but never took back its unsettling omnipresence. In general, Ferrade was a pretty depressing place and Aventurine wondered, not for the first or last time, why anyone would consider this a vacation option, and how did the core do that anyway, and what were those fibrous mats made out of. The climate wasn't bad though. The warm wind, especially as she crossed the plains at high speeds, did nice things to her hair.

The lights of the town bobbed inside the transparent domelike walls, patrolled by extremely bored rubies on spherical patrol vehicles. Maybe they were just excited to have something to do other than stare at grey hills all day but they demanded identification, statement of purpose, and an autograph before their supervisor called in a monotone to please let the poor quartz on her way already, and they allowed her to pass through the gates.

Upon dismounting her cruiser, Aventurine guided it by her side as she took to the walkways. Like most Homeworld-issued establishments, the Prime Settlement was well-kept and prismatic in design, with symmetric silver architecture and the now three-sided emblem of the Diamond Authority on the door of anyone with respect. But unlike Homeworld, this small community grew horizontally. Less skyscrapers and wider walkways, courtyards, and squares. The atmosphere was clearer, quieter, calmer. None of the tensed crowds of Homeworld's cities clotted these streets, just small groups of tourists or nobility, the occasional quartz also on furlough. Aventurine recognized a jasper as she passed and nodded a greeting.

"Long time no see," the jasper remarked, disrupting her own journey to walk alongside Aventurine. "How's the headache?"

"It's hardly been long," Aventurine responded. Her own cultured voice, that of the core planets, juxtaposed quite uniquely with the harsher accent of the colonies where Jasper had been made. "And I'm fine, thank you. Nothing a nap couldn't fix."

"What's with you and sleeping?"

"You can hardly judge until you've tried it."

Jasper huffed and changed the subject: "So what brings you here?"

"A transaction." She shrugged. "I'm just going to pick up a pearl from Nacre. I'd completely forgotten."

The orange gem — a handspan shorter, just a tad wider, with longer hair than Aventurine — raised her chin. Her gem, placed squarely where her nose would be, was a bit dusty from perhaps her last brawl. "Nacre, hmm. When she called you...did she sound half as pathetic as always, or more?"

Aventurine frowned. "She did seem to want my order off her hands awful fast. Why?"

"I've just been called back to investigate her case as a witness." With all the money she'd had, Jasper had purchased a cheap but cute peach pearl on a whim from the Mother of Pearls right before the Earth conflict and had recently returned her for behavior modification. "Apparently the shortage of business during the war caused her to do some pretty risky things, and she ended up losing more money than she'd planned to make. A lot of her pearls came out defective like mine, she used stolen tech, she tacked on illicit costs, all of this fraud and only now she's been caught."

"Ouch."

"No kidding. But yeah, just a heads up. You might just be her last customer. Watch your back while down there. Don't pick up strange bubbles or anything."

A gemling's advice, really, nothing she'd never heard before. Aventurine raised her eyebrows. "Obviously. Oh — and, Jasper?"

"Yeah?"

They reached an intersection and Aventurine stopped to look at the younger quartz. "Wipe your gem after fights. You can't command respect while looking like a clod."

With the faintest of smiles, or at least, something that she considered a smile, she clapped her hand on Jasper's shoulder and went her own way. Only time and luck would tell if they ever met again, Aventurine knew, but she couldn't ever ignore the thought that with a bit of maturity, this one jasper was destined for something incredible. If she found the chance, she would give anything to see it.

On foot, it didn't take Aventurine long to reach her destination. It was a dual purpose port for both warp pads and larger-scale industrial ships, on one side with barracks for military and industrial workers, and on the other side with an elegant little hotel and casino. Out of idle curiosity she hit the casino first. The first thing she saw was Paz Calipha, a newer chance game involving a forty-two-sided die and three spun wheels, where a cocky citrine was showing off for a trio of tourmalines. With a smart nod and a flick of her wrist, Aventurine made a competing bet and got a value of spice — full set on the wheels, two rolls of one, and one roll of seven. With a two-fingered salute she collected the citrine's bet, and in the port she used the money to purchase a cheap ticket to K8 Amphitri.

There was a reason Aventurines were discouraged from gambling and encouraged towards military strategy, and that reason is what some would call a Midas' touch, a supernatural tilt towards lucky outcomes. It was a Midas' touch that, in my opinion, only ever worked when she didn't think too hard about it, because the only times when she really needed it were the times it didn't work.

This would be one of those times.

The transport was a small ship off an assembly line, a one-size-fits-all ship for errand gems with a variety of duties. It was divided into three, distinctive sections, the back for cargo, the middle as the passenger section, and the cockpit. Hard to say that it was well-kept, but the streaks on the windows told her that someone had at least tried. The pilot was a chubby turquoise who had cheap colorful baubles on her dashboard; the copilot a scarlet gem of indecipherable type who glared murderously from behind a clear visor.

The passenger section was remodeled as an imitation cafeteria complete with tables and weird puffy seats that were snug for her size, no food, but with a smoky, vaguely greasy aura that suggested the ghosts of good meals. The passengers were no less weird. A pair of olivines hunched over a frightening tangle of wires and screws. A ragged, feline alien with bejeweled ears and a respiratory mask, a native of Crystal System Khaoi if she wasn't mistaken, held a small bundle to her chest. In the darkest corner, a rutilated quartz watched the whole room with her one rough eye. When Aventurine squeezed herself into an empty booth, no one cared except for the khao native, who eyed her in fear. Big deal. Those people were scared of everyone.

Although that'd make sense, considering that not three hundred years ago, Aventurine herself had led a million gems across that little native's planet, burning, stealing, or killing everything they saw.

After routine ship checks led mostly by the unknown copilot, the pilot patched in a shipwide announcement via a hundred-year-old intercom. _"This is your pilot, Turquoise, speaking. Our copilot today is...uh...what's your name again?"_

 _"Synth subject 44X3G."_

 _"Uh...she's your copilot. We'll be departing shortly."_

It wasn't exactly a comforting message and Aventurine briefly reconsidered her choice of transportation, but this was cheap and safer than the galaxy warps, many of which had been hijacked during the war and were currently under reconstruction. She'd have extra money for later or emergencies, and anyway, the aristocracy who rode on the higher class transports could be shiftier than any hitchhikers she'd meet here. They'd desecrate your reputation, your type, your cut, your facet, and your basic dignity with a single high pitched laugh. These guys would just steal your wallet. Well, perhaps also your physical form in order to sell you on a black market as ground-up gem dust, but that was avoidable — you were allowed to crush someone for physically assaulting you, but that generally wasn't an accepted response to gossip.

This was why quartzes were soldiers, not socialites.

With a deep hum and a crash from the front, some cursing in three languages, and a sputter of the primary engines that sent all passengers jerking to the left, the ship lifted into the air and blasted off into space. According to the holographic schedule next to the airlock, the ship would stop first at the colony on Crystal System Khaoi and then at K8 Amphitri within a standard Homeworld rotation, at least if she held any faith in the preprogrammed hyperlight speed course. She didn't. Aventurine was an old soul — could still remember the days when all screens were handheld and propulsion-based space travel was the big thing. Never once in the eons had she truly trusted a piece of tech.

"As good as you get," she murmured to herself, idly pushing a spilt bit of water around the table with her callused finger, "something will always break."

After about half a military hour, during which the khao native's bundle had begun screaming and Aventurine officially decided to reconsider cheap rides in the future, she let herself drift into a fuzzy half-sleep. She didn't often dream when she slept but she did this time. Noises from reality danced with noises from her mind; the flickering colors of hyperlight speed in the ship windows morphed into figures that waved and winked in the shadows. A faceless, gemless pearl sat demurely in the corner of her dream vision.

A ringing noise bounced across the floor and the pearl ran away, but the ringing persisted, fading in and out with static at times but soon becoming so sharp and high that it seemed to rip from the dreamscape and into the real world. Except that it didn't, because the noise was doing the exact opposite.

And when Aventurine opened her eyes, her reality was red lights and chaos.

* * *

On an unrelated note, do you remember what I said about luck?


	2. Debris

**i got only 2 views so does this give me the permission to say swear words really loud in the author's notes**

* * *

 **II. Debris — Steven Price**

* * *

One of the first things that lesser silicates and phosphates will learn upon their first lessons in interstellar travel is that, while in deep hyperspace, you shall never _ever_ make a quartz angry (page 44 of _Hyperspace and You: A Guide to Safe Colonization Vol. 1_ by Baotite Facet 6T3N, Cut 1AT).

Aventurine was unaware that this was a written rule, so when she pounded on the cockpit door, she was met by a look of death on the pilot's round face and a quiet "We're dead" from the copilot. The turquoise's dashboard baubles bounced uncharacteristically fast, like the disconcerting vibration under her feet and the wobbly streaks of hyperlight in the front window. Hopefully she was allowed to do this — she had the luck never to be on a craft quite this chaotic, but a few millennia ago before she'd earned her promotion, she had often seen her supervisor stomping in absolute fury towards the cockpit when technical difficulties arose. She appeared to be the highest ranking gem here other than the other quartz, but true to a rutilated quartz, _she_ wouldn't be of any help. So Aventurine took initiative.

"What's going on?" she shouted over the warning alarms. The scarlet copilot, tinted blue in the hyperlight, slowly turned back to pressing buttons as if to tell the other gem, _This is your problem._

One of the turquoise's hands clamped in a death grip on the controls while the other flipped switches faster than Aventurine could track. "Th — the preprogrammed hyperdrive course wh — it wasn't right!" she stammered. "Shutting down energy source one — "

She pulled with all her strength on a lever. As a result, the ship jerked, one of the olivines in the back tumbled across the floor, and the wobbly hyperlight got wobblier. Another beeping noise joined the cacophony.

Aventurine just frowned. "Then why can't you make it right?"

"It doesn't work like that," the copilot cut in. I doubt she'd ever read _Hyperspace and You._ "The ship somehow just now sensed it, but if we continue on our present course, and if the quantum stabilizer doesn't kick in before we reach the given coordinates...we're going to pass right through a comet storm."

She paused dramatically as if it meant anything to Aventurine. It didn't.

"Well," her frown grew deeper, "what does that mean?"

Both pilot gems suddenly seemed to be very busy with the control panels on the dashboard. "Sending distress call," the copilot yelled, then: "Preparing to divert hyperdrive power to primary brakes."

"This is your pilot speaking," announced Turquoise over a microphone as her hands flew across the dash. A particularly violent jerk almost threw Aventurine off her feet but she hadn't finished glaring at both frantic pilots, so she just held onto the doorframe and continued. Turquoise gulped. "Some of you might have noticed a slight turbulence and beeping sound — that is the sound of us hurtling towards certain death. Please stay calm, fasten your seat belts, and await further instructions. We'll be coming out of hyperspace shortly."

The copilot, yelling wordlessly, threw her weight onto a lever.

If entering hyperspace is like having every photon in your physical form scattered across a circle with a diameter of fifteen feet, then emerging from hyperspace is like a great cosmic hand scooping up all the photons at once and packing them together again like so much frozen water-based precipitation. Other than that, the experience is truly indescribable, especially when the ship's quantum stabilizer is offline and you are emerging into a comet storm, even more so when you are already on edge from seven beings' hysterical screams. It took all her strength to stay on her feet even as she locked her hands on either sides of the cockpit door, the industrial-grade steel bending pliably under her fingertips, her boots driven into the grated floor. A terrible light drowned them all.

When she forced her eyes open, she almost screamed too.

She had known comets were big, but she'd never imagined _this_ — this fleet of cosmic battleships, some dwarfing even Homeworld's Diamond cruisers and probably a good deal heavier, too. Their heads glowed white and their tails were blue flames. As far off as some were they didn't seem to be moving very fast, but then a tiny blue flash whizzed in front of the ship so close and so fast that the turquoise pilot pulled the ship almost completely onto it's side.

"It's the small ones you really need to watch out for!" she yelled to her copilot, and then to Aventurine, "Ma'am, I'd advise you to maybe take your seat?"

Aventurine ignored the second part and addressed the first. "How can you avoid something you can't see?"

"You don't," both pilots responded at once, then the copilot said, "The odds of successfully navigating a space comet field are approximately 4970 to 1. Diverting all extremity power to — "

She would never finish because just then, a small comet tore through the starboard wing of the craft and scraped the primary engine. Aventurine didn't know these details, just that the ship's right side seemed to have been yanked against its artificial gravity and sent all unseated occupants tumbling (meaning Aventurine and that one olivine). Momentarily her traveling cloak blinded her, but thinking fast she dismissed it. Her feet instinctually adjusted to the shift and she landed on both feet and one hand, the other free and ready to move. The small red copilot tore out of the cockpit, snatched up the two olivines, and pulled them in to help.

"We've been hit!" she yelled to the other passengers. "Get to the escape pod, but don't eject until we've cleared the storms! We'll tell you when."

For the first time in the whole trip the rutilated quartz moved. She charged through the door to the cargo hold and pulled a lever, illuminating a small round door in the very back of the ship. "General Aventurine!" she shouted. "Hurry!"

Aventurine was mildly confused because she couldn't recall introducing herself as _the_ General Aventurine at any point, then shrugged it off because aventurines didn't commonly have their gems on their feet, like hers. She _had_ worked with rutilates before, on the siege of Kelthoth…ah well. Didn't matter, there was a ship to escape. Formalities later.

There was one other being in the passenger section, the alien khaoi with her bundle — no, that bundle was an infant. Correction: there were _two_ other beings. Noting how the khao's ears lowered in wariness as Aventurine stepped closer, she adopted a rough approximation of the khaoi language and told the pilgrim to follow her, that there was an escape pod in the back of the ship. She'd butchered the word for escape pod, but it had apparently gotten across, because the khao obeyed her.

"There should be oxygen supplements in a kit somewhere," instructed Aventurine to the rutilated quartz, who was already seated in the pod's largest seat. There would be enough room for her, the khao with her child, and the two olivines. The rutilate didn't seem to agree.

"This pod's only got room for you and me," she sneered. "The alien won't fit — "

"That's fine, because I'm not going on," Aventurine cut her off. "Say what you will, but they are occupants of a valuable Crystal System and I will NOT be responsible for casualties outside of my own ranks. You are to share with the savages whether you like it or not."

"But, General — "

"That is an ORDER, soldier!"

She pointed the khao mother, who was less than half her height and quivered over her child, into the pod and then stormed off. Her roar still echoed shakily over the tremendous protests of the ship, the lights of which began flickering as Aventurine stomped back up to the cockpit. "There's nothing more we can do!" one of the olivines had been saying until she saw the quartz standing above her. Her nasally voice tapered into a squeak. Aventurine just glared.

"If all you're doing is being pessimistic, you'd do well to get into that damn escape pod already."

"Yes'm." She had never seen olivines be more physically active than they were now, running away from the disintegrating cockpit.

The only three gems now not in a safe place were herself, the copilot, and the turquoise who looked close to tears. One of the dashboard panels coughed acrid black smoke and the copilot worked hard, but seemed to have crossed the line at which she'd recognized how hopeless the situation was. The ship had cleared the comet storm and now rocketed down towards a grey planet she recognized as Crystal System Khaoi.

"Quartz, get back to the pod!" shouted the copilot at the same time as the turquoise cried, "What are you doing here?!"

"No room," Aventurine responded over the deafening roar of certain death. "What's the status?"

"We're totally cracked," the copilot relayed.

"Escape pod, eject now. I repeat, EJECT NOW!" the turquoise screamed into the comms.

The ship shuddered as the escape pod blasted away. The planet was now very large in the canopy, enough for Aventurine to see a swirling storm that covered a good portion of the upper hemisphere. Their curving trajectory would take them right into that storm unless they regained control of the secondary engines and either regrew their starboard wing or destroyed the port, according to the copilot. The starboard engines were strained too much like this.

"Brilliant," said Aventurine.

It was then that she got what I like to call a Good Bad Idea, because that's exactly what it was. "You said we could fix the trajectory and put less strain on the starboard engines if the port wing's destroyed," restated Aventurine to the best of her ability. She had to almost yell over the roar of the ship, but yelling is a natural gift for quartzes. Turquoise gritted her teeth.

"It would make this ship nearly uncontrollable and make landing much more difficult, but if it were gone, we could fix the trajectory and avoid getting ripped apart by that storm," she responded. "Basically, we would have better odds of survival, but more options for what could go wrong."

"How much time do we have, tops, until we start to really need that?"

"I'd estimate about five military minutes. Why?"

"I want to try my luck," Aventurine shrugged, snatched up the transponder from a nearby crisis kit, and gave a casual two-fingered salute to the two pilots. "Close the cockpit doors and try to slow this ship down some — I'm opening the airlock."

Two high voices screamed something that she ignored as she clipped the transponder to her belt, shapeshifted a harness and leash, latched one end to a handrail by the airlock, lifted the locking mechanism, and slammed her hand on the red button that read _DO NOT OPEN WHILE IN FLIGHT_ in three languages. At the very last second she remembered to shift spikes on her boots and a protective covering over her exposed gem, similar to those she might wear into an aerial battle, and as the door slid open she let herself get swept into the vacuum of space.

The situation wasn't dissimilar from an emergency evac about five hundred years previously, and just as she did then, just as training told her, Aventurine nimbly maneuvered her body against the momentum of the speeding ship and drove her spiked heels through the metal wing below her. It took all her strength just to hold herself there, legs bent so that both feet could stay secure on the wing, both hands gripping an outcropping on the wing that was getting disturbingly hot. Not to mention the sheer surrealism of it all, pulling at her mind too — one would think that at speeds like this, with factors like these, the sound would be overwhelming. Instead, it was deafeningly quiet.

Aventurine wasted no time as she gripped at the portside wing, which was mainly intact besides a few normal scratches. That was about to change, she mused dryly as she pried the hand closer to the ship body, her right, from its outcropping. And she summoned her weapon. Unlike aventurines with chest gems, the most common type, aventurines with abnormal placements often didn't pull their weapons directly from their gemstones, and instead just popped them into their hands. She did this now — don't even ask how she could — and the familiar chain and weight of a double-ended meteor hammer materialized in her clenched fingers.

There wasn't actually much she could do with the weapon here. Being literally two heavy weights on the ends of a chain, her meteors were for close combat or short-range throwing all against opponents, not destruction of ships; a mace would be infinitely more useful. It was too risky to swing it while moving at over a hundred miles an hour. So she improvised instead, and dismissed the chain and second weight to let a single weight fall into her hands.

Now with a heavier punch, Aventurine drew back her arm and began to smash.

It was more difficult than she'd expected. The first blow made a nice-sized dent in the hinge between the wing and the ship itself, but unlike the fragile inside of the ship, this was industrial-standard titanium. Only a few spare things could do real damage to these bad boys: comets, literal stars, maybe a black hole or two, Diamonds, large cranes manipulated by clumsy emeralds from Facet 2, and really, really determined quartzes. The last one was hypothetical. Hopefully, with a few lucky hits, it wouldn't be, and she could go back inside.

The word "lucky" was the kicker though. Aventurine aimed for the sides of the hinges, hoping that the blows could knock the bolts free, but she actually had no idea how these things worked. I can tell you because I took my time researching before I did something so impulsive like writing a detailed account of my birth, and know for sure that the wing hinges on Tethys-4122, Model 9ACs were triple secured with a gear system within the hinge and a double-bolt locking mechanism to prevent exactly what Aventurine was trying to do right then. Space pirates _are_ a thing, after all. Only a certain blow in a right place could do the right kind of damage to even loosen the bolt, but if too many parts of the hinge were damaged before that blow was made, it would just make the hinge stationary instead of loose.

Aventurine didn't know this, only that she managed to hit that certain place from pure luck. A bolt about the size of her hand began to vibrate, and with her fingers, she slid it out and dropped it into space. The wing began to flap and shudder under her feet; the second bolt from the hinge was already coming loose and she dropped her weight to give her hand free purchase on it.

Once that thing was truly loose, this wing would likely tear backwards from the ship's momentum and rip free of the back hinge on its own. There was a slight chance that she might have to tear it off herself but she'd cross that bridge when she got there. With a last burst of determination, she unscrewed the last bolt and watched the hinge shudder, slip a little to the now unprotected side, and peeled off like solid strip adhesive.

I wish she'd just stop thinking like that. It's not a good trait to have in a strategist.

From there it just went downhill. It worked like she'd wanted it to, but space gymnastics were for hematites and she hadn't expected it to work _that fast._ Aventurine released her grip on the wing now, tried to push herself out of the way before the wing flew back, and instead found that the wing peeled _up_ instead of _down_ like she'd predicted, and that her safety leash as it had looped over the front of the wing was pulled taut as the plane of metal swung back towards her in a flash.

The loose wing slammed into her body for the second time that day, except that this time, she hadn't been prepared for it.

Stars exploded across her vision. Maybe that was just the little flicker of light as her leash popped out of existence and she, plastered as she was to a disembodied plate of metal, flipped backwards into the vacuum of space, but it couldn't matter to her anymore because it meant that she was cracked. (Figuratively.) One thing you don't know about space until you've been in it is that things take a lot longer to stop moving because nothing's there to stop them, and so, after an uncomfortable amount of spinning, Aventurine realized that she wasn't going to stop until she let go. She had been subconsciously gripping the wing with all her strength.

So she did, again, and her head snapped back as it slammed into her chin.

Time can't tell how long it took until the pain subsided, until she gained enough control of her body to stop spinning in the void, and to crack open her eyelids and see only darkness pierced by pinpricks of light. She had instinctually retreated to the vulnerable fetal position, like a newborn gemling alone in a kindergarten. Had she poofed? She couldn't remember, though she'd retreated into her gem so many times that sometimes she didn't even notice.

Her pale hair bloomed around her, free, but still as everything else around her. All before her was nothing — she couldn't even see the disembodied wing. Only by turning her head as far as possible, unable to turn her entire body around from lack of solid purchase, could she catch the last glimpses of the turquoise's ship as it blazed through the atmosphere.

The planet seemed larger when she faced it alone, as if it could swallow her up simply by its presence. For once in her life Aventurine did not like the solitude.

Before her a void, behind her a planet that wouldn't come looking for one aventurine…unless she acted soon, and quickly. It was unexpectedly cold now that she wasn't stuck to the side of an overheating ship and her fingers fumbled numbly with the transponder on her belt. For a terrifying second it slipped away from her and she swore as she scrambled after it, but soon again she clutched the little cube in both hands. "Transmitting on all frequencies," she said thickly into the receiver. She would never get used to how she couldn't hear in space. If someone received her message, how would she hear them? More importantly, and this she just realized, how would the transponder pick up _her_ voice?

This did complicate things, and also answered the question as to why the transponder wasn't glowing yellow like they did when recognizing and processing input noise. Luckily (as many things came to pass with Aventurine) it seemed as if someone had thought of the same dilemma and installed a click-code button, shiny as though new. Obviously, because how many gems routinely got shot out into dead space? It had been so long since she'd used click-code; she could hardly remember the values for each word.

Finally she managed to piece together a semi-intelligible message: _TO ALL FREQ. — AVENTURINE F 1S7K, C 3YA — ALONE & ADRIFT ABV. KHAOI — PLS HELP ASAP — TRNSPD. TRACKING FREQ. ACTIVE — MONEY REWARD. _She wasn't really sure how much money she'd give them, probably just whatever was in her pockets, which happened to be enough to pay for one pearl, a ride home, and probably a sandwich from a traveling vendor. Since she was reluctant to lose the pearl after all this effort and suspected they wouldn't pay for a taxi, she hoped her rescuers would be happy with keltri meat and follops-on-rye, hold the sauce.

The thought of a sandwich…well, that made her reluctant to add the money bit too. Her stomach was about as empty as the space around her. But if there was anything she'd learned in twelve thousand years, it was that the best way to get people to do something nice for you was to pay them.

After sending the message, Aventurine waited what she felt was a few minutes before punching it in again and adding _Y. DIAMOND_ after her facet and cut. If not the advertisement of money, this might get attention especially from inhabitants of Khaoi — Yellow Diamond had direct control of the planet and might reward someone who helped one of her most valuable quartzes. She cringed a little at the thought of Yellow Diamond, however; while she might honor a helper, Aventurine would be under no small amount of scrutiny about what had happened on the ship. If she was unlucky then she might just get an earful from the General of the Army, an amethyst who was altogether way too full of herself.

Perhaps it was just Aventurine being impatient again, but she broadcasted the message five more times before she saw the lights of a ship in the corner of her eye, seemingly coming from the planet. Seven in all — a lucky number. To the best of her ability she waved her arms, shouted even though she knew it wouldn't do anything, even clicked out another message reading simply _HELP._ She couldn't find the ship's frequency, which should have been a warning sign, but she couldn't care less by this point. _Stars_ it was blazing cold out here.

Even still, there was something strange about this ship. It approached abnormally fast for a mining freighter, for one, and as it came closer she noticed that it was of a darker color that, if not for its lights, might make it difficult for drones to "see". Secondly, Aventurine swore that she recognized the red symbol spraypainted to the side. Of course, she could just be mistaken because she couldn't see well with the lights in her eyes. No one had used that symbol for hundreds of years, after all, and the Diamond Authority had made sure to erase it from history upon stomping out the last resistance on Khaoi. After all, these people were here to help…

The ship stopped above her and a tractor beam opened up, nearly blinding her with its intensity, but finally offering the reprieve of movement as it pulled her through open doors. Instantly she recognized the careful mixture of oxygen, sulfur, and nitrogen as was the atmosphere of Khaoi, meaning that natives had found her before her own gemkind. Typical.

A glorious sound came to her — an airlock being closed, and the slam of her own feet against metal floors as the tractor beam released her. In sharp contrast to the lights of the tractor beam, the darkness beyond the airlock was as gluttonous as the void of space. Instantly, she was on her guard — regardless of her rank, why would no one come to meet her?

"Is there anyone here?" she shouted. But when she spoke, it masked the padding of feet from the shadows behind her, the shifting of fabric, and the light breathing of several organisms.

The clinking of metal was what she heard first, and she whirled around with her meteor hammer gripped between her two still-cold hands, but she wasn't prepared for what jumped out at her. Multiple shadows pulled her knees out from under her and yanked a rough sack over her head, pulling it so tight around her neck that she feared she might have to retreat into her gem. There had to be at least a dozen attackers, judging by the burst of voices and how hard it was to move even one of her limbs.

 _NO!_ she roared to herself, possibly out loud too. One of the pairs of hands that pinned her arm to the ground faltered in their grip. Aventurine used this opportunity to yank her arm out and punch something in the gut, but then three other pairs of hands pulled it painfully behind her back and locked it against the other wrist with a set of thick handcuffs. How many attackers were there? Better question: could she crack them all on her own?

With more effort, they locked her ankles together and a cuff around her neck, dragging her with a chain through too-warm hallways and finally shoving her through a door that opened with a _clang._ Red, strobing light was all she could see through the linen sack; her ears were assaulted from all directions by offensive music with too much distorted bass and synth and the distinctive laughter of a party.

A…party?

The voices didn't recede as Aventurine stumbled forward, held by the arms and neck and with some cold sharp thing balanced just above her gemstone. In fact, they seemed to escalate when she was forced to her knees and secured by the neck chain to some pole that pressed into her back. A scratchy voice yelled to turn down the music, to which another scratchy voice responded turn down for what before obeying.

The sack came off. Aventurine's head shot up and she surveyed her surroundings — which turned out to be pretty tacky.

It was, in fact, a khaoi-style party of legendary proportions, complete with a buffet near the wall, a wicked sound system, and about a hundred young khaoi in skimpy neon. Glitter was literally everywhere. A prismatic sphere hung from the ceiling, casting stray bits of rainbow light as it spun. Aventurine had been staked down right below that sphere in the center of the crowd with about ten feet between herself and the nearest khaoi. They gaped and tittered to each other, and Aventurine snarled at them. One flinched. The others just laughed.

 _"HEY."_ A pitchy voice echoed around the room, irritated and a bit slurred. The crowd parted in the front to reveal a stage, where a young khao of indeterminable gender reclined in a throne seemingly built of scrap metal and dunked in pink glitter. Behind them, a dark violet flag emblazoned with a feline head, the symbol of the resistance that she thought had died three hundred years ago, hung from the wall. A rhinestone-studded microphone dangled from the kid's slender fingers. "Hey, yeah, I'm talkin' to you. Aventurine Facet 1S Whatever."

"Facet 1S7K, Cut 3YA," supplied a girl to the left. The kid in the throne glared at her.

"Uh, look who actually didn't ask, Sevi."

"Oh, well then. I'm _so sorry,_ King of Everything."

The girl's sarcasm dripped from the title, but it still told Aventurine quite a bit. She scrutinized the kid a little closer. Despite being on the younger side of adulthood, and an out-of-place softness in his skinny body, he _did_ seem to be some sort of leader. He wore a bandanna around his head and left his strange paw-like feet shoeless. His clothes were just as loose, liberal, and vibrant as any of the other partygoers', but also like everyone else, she noticed an unintentional dishevelment that suggested he had probably been wearing the same clothes for a while now. When he moved his head, glitter sifted off his dark red ears.

"Listen," she said to the child very carefully, making sure to make eye contact. He didn't seem to be taking it seriously so she discarded sugarcoating. "I have no quarrel with you unless you want it, so you had better give me a cracked good reason for assaulting me. I come in peace and I can offer you whatever money you want."

The kid eyed her languidly. No one was laughing now. In fact, the party room had gone almost entirely silent save the natural background noise of one hundred adolescent organic life forms in a room. When the leader stood from his scrap metal throne and stretched his arms above his head, the three rings in his triangular left ear clinked.

"I'm not out for money," he said into the microphone, and strutted down the stage to face Aventurine nose to nose. Figuratively, that is, but he did get close enough that she glimpsed a tear in his ear and bandages under his loose black shirt. He looked her up and down — she was at least twice his height, not to mention anyone else's in this room — and they were eye to eye even as Aventurine sat, but his full bottom lip protruded petulantly with the message of _I am still above you._

"Sure, it'd be real nice," said the kid, "but you don't band together ninety-five orphaned khaoi kids just to get a quartz's money. No, we're out for something…a bit more real."

With a sharp, practiced little flourish he flicked up his index finger and let his small black claw gleam in the liquid red light. Aventurine couldn't help but cringe, just a little, as he slid that claw in a quite delicate line down the surface of her gemstone.

"We wanna make glitter of the gems who killed our mothers," the pirate kid smiled.


	3. Time Lapse

**(CRAP — dont tell my mum)**

* * *

 **III. Time Lapse — TheFatRat**

* * *

Aventurine decided that day, as she hung from a cage above the khaoi revelers, that she in fact did hate something more than bloodthirsty rebels.

That something was _young_ bloodthirsty rebels.

There was something distinctly aesthetic in the situation, that couldn't be ignored. It just wasn't _her_ aesthetic. The group of wanderers had simply been in the area when they'd intercepted her transmission, and instead of finishing their party, they decided to incorporate her capture to it. After they'd lured her in with the tractor beam, the kids who had attacked her had been doing it on a party dare. Her execution would be done on planet-wide broadcast and as soon as they reached a place with a good signal. She came to know the khaoi's glitter-covered leader as Invidian, Invi as his compatriots called him, and that despite his connection to frivolity, he took his mission very seriously.

"Look, I wanna get it over with and kill you now," he had drawled, "but we've been waiting for this for, like, three revolutions. We want our planet back, you know, and the only way we can do that is by rising up the people with us and driving you parasites offa it. But the only way we can do that is if we take this kinda initiative, y'know, because you're so much more powerful than us and fair fighting and whatever. It's really nothin' personal."

"Oh, no, that's fine. I completely understand," she responded with a straight face. "A mission of revenge started, coincidentally, with my gem being shattered on live broadcast. You knew who I was. Certainly _not_ personal at all."

Invi was quite perceptive to sarcasm and his slitted hazel eyes narrowed. Then he burst out with a contemptuous laugh. All the while he had been leaning quite close to her face and now gave her a quick, soft nip on the ear. "As personal as you crushing my grandpa's skull. Look, I think you're cool, but we're doing this thing no matter what. It's politics."

"You're a child," Aventurine murmured. Invi brushed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes.

"I know. Live like you're dying and all that. Just enjoy yourself, quartz, it's a party."

The thing about Invi was that he wasn't even trying to be cryptic — he was just inherently vague about things and knew it. Aventurine wouldn't be surprised if he actually didn't understand what he was doing at all, and was at the orders of some higher organization. The thing about khaoi was that they typically didn't stand alone like that; they were the perfect worker race, determined to get a job done but not headstrong enough to take initiative. It was just curious that the higher organization had chosen Invi and his adolescent friends as the first vessel of revolution — in fact, they probably hadn't at all. Chances were that this encounter had been an accident. In conclusion...these children weren't prepared to take care of a very angry prisoner.

After Invi and his friends had gotten bored with her, which was a little after the not-entirely-bad-looking rebel leader convinced her to share his drink and then give him a heartless kiss on the lips, she was moved to the cage on the ceiling. They didn't want her "hogging space on the dance floor", which roughly translated to "no more tripping my guests as they pass". The worst she could do now was spit onto their heads, but since she was too civilized to do that, she didn't.

The party raged on. Aventurine's arms were getting cramped behind her back and she disliked the weight of the chain on her neck; it reminded her too much of a correction collar she had worn in her first centuries of service. All of the khaoi's perturbing music was beginning to sound the same, too, and filled her with such irritation that she just wanted to hit something. She figured that was the idea, however — the party wasn't just escalating, but rather, getting a bit more violent with every minute.

If she was going to move, she would have to do it fast. When she had first been transferred to this cell, she had instantly took stock of it and knew that it wouldn't fit her if she stood to her full eight feet. Her bound legs pressed up awkwardly against her chest as she leaned against the bars. It, also, would be very difficult to break these chains without hurting herself, unless she were in a smaller form —

 _Obviously._ That was it. A smaller form.

Once calm enough, she tested it, making sure to turn her back away from the main light source so as to lessen the chance of someone seeing, and simply shapeshifted her hand smaller. It slid out with little resistance. But why stop there? An idea sparked in Aventurine's mind and she let herself shift again, her vantage point lowering, the chains falling uselessly off. The collar, though loose, didn't come off, but she hadn't lost her strength with this curious new form and snapped the end of its heavy chain like a piece of string.

By this point, someone had noticed her sudden movements, and the natural noises of the party morphed into agitation. Someone shrieked, "She broke the chains!" and Aventurine took this as her signal to go — the smaller form allowed a bit more movement and she threw herself satisfyingly against the cage's door, at first just swinging up and losing her balance, but on the second try bursting through the flimsy hinges in a shower of glitter.

The revelers scattered as she fell, every eye pinned on her new form, and partly just to show off she tucked her head and landed with a roll. Standing on padded feet, she stretched unfamiliarly wiry arms, pulled her hands down scruffy ears, a crop top, and a toned narrow waist. Bladelike claws extended from her fingers and toes. She now had the full attention of not just the party but also Invidian, who backed up against his disgusting rebel flag and gaped. At now a meager, yet powerful height of four foot ten, Aventurine seemed to command much more respect from the similarly built natives around her. Or maybe they'd just never seen a gem shapeshift into a khao before.

"So what was that you said about a _fair fight?"_

She still had the chain and spun it like she would with her meteor hammers in a lazy fan. Invi looked towards a trio of stouter khaoi for assistance, but Aventurine cut him off before he could speak. "If you call yourself the savior of your world, you'll take the fight into your own hands. You and me, no interference, no weapons, the old fashioned way. How do you say — fair and square."

He folded his arms. "That ain't _fair,_ quartz. You're immortal and I'm not a warrior. How do I know you won't try'ta pull a gem trick?"

"If you see something, I'll let your guests convince me to stop. Injury is okay, no intentionally fatal blows, destroying my physical form is fine. I'll avoid your heart, lungs, and throat if you avoid my gem. If you win, you have full permission to grind me up until I can be scattered in a sandstorm. But if I win, you give me an express ride to System K8 Amphitri and we forget any of this ever happened. I won't rat you out to the Diamond Authority and your pirate party will remain free to pillage the galaxy. Either way, you win."

She lay the conditions down one after the other, familiar with the pattern but uncertain of the outcome. Slowly, the khao pirate set his drink on a nearby table, padded down from his stage and stopped about ten paces away from her, small fists by his sides. Then he spat out the word that any respectable adult despises: "Whatever."

Already she felt a twinge of irritation, but used that as energy to get herself into a ready stance and push her hair over her shoulders. (Force of habit. This new form didn't have long hair, just wispy fur. She turned the push into an awkward stretch.) The crowds around them began to chant "Fight, fight, fight" and retreated even more, forming an elliptical arena under the prismatic party sphere. Invidian and Aventurine crossed the distance, took hands as was custom before a khaoi fight, and shook on it before staying locked together for a second.

"I hope you know what you've gotten yourself into. You _can_ just surrender and give me the ride now," Aventurine warned the boy. His handshake had been purposefully tight but still weak. He trembled even now as their thumbs pressed against the backs of each other's hand.

"I'm not a _child_ ," he spat. "How old do you think you are anyway?"

Only the young ever asked how old she was. Their hands trembled. "Imagine your age," she explained, "what's that? Forty? That's young for a khao. Now take that number...and multiply it by seven hundred."

Invi was silent.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," Aventurine said mildly, and stepped forward into the simplest combat sequence she knew.

She first grabbed his wrist with her free hand and, before he could release the handshake, lifted his arm, spun under, and cracked his elbow over her shoulder. Due to a terrible miscalculation of speed and strength differences, however, she ended up throwing him to the ground, leaving him winded and on his back. A collective groan went up from the watching revelers, even some yells against Aventurine in particular.

Rude.

Obviously, that hadn't been enough to put Invi down for good — khaoi were miners and forgers of metal; they were built to last, and a simple throw over the shoulder wouldn't destroy them. He jumped up lithely and also drew his claws, charging at Aventurine with a shrieking howl, but at the last second she sidestepped him and hooked her ankle around his. Kudos to him for swinging around her elbow strike, however. And what an interesting take on the Peruzzi maneuver, hooking his arm around the back of her body and attempting to at least inconvenience her by pulling on her shoulder. The objective was to throw your opponent over your body in a flip, but since Invi could hardly pull that off, Aventurine just stumbled. A knee drove into her gut and then an elbow into the small of her back.

"Bloody clod — " she grunted, but swung a backhand blow towards Invi's head anyway. It just grazed his nose and he snapped back into a defensive stance. "Who taught you that? Some defective unit?"

"I lived near one of your awful Kindergartens," Invi responded, fists hovering in front of his face. His nose had begun to bleed. "Some young gems played with me and my friends after training. That was stupid of them."

"Indeed," Aventurine agreed, and flew forward again. It was best to not wait for the opponent to attack and to just make the first move, especially as it gave the option to feint. She faked a roundhouse kick but launched herself into the air and slammed her other foot into Invi's back as he moved to avoid the false kick. On the third kick, aimed more towards his face, Invi blocked it with a sharp outside swing that sent a lance of pain up her leg.

There were only a few special kicks she performed with her left foot in order to protect her gem, and she used one now. Ignoring the pain, she followed through on the momentum of the failed roundhouse kick with a full spin and a devastating hook with her heel. _Contact._

Invi stumbled and Aventurine took the opportunity to wrestle him to the ground. Harder for her because he was fast and unpredictable when panicked, harder for him because because she was stronger than he. She had pinned down one of his hands and drove her knee into his stomach, but as he struggled, that one elusive hand suddenly shot out and yanked at her neck chain.

Her first thought was "bloody pebble" followed by "oops". In her surprise, she had her grip falter and he had reversed their positions with a neat little flip, pulling at her chain and pushing her head down simultaneously. She roared in pain.

Mostly reflexively, her body snapped back and threw Invi off her into a table, where he dashed into what must have been the lighting system, because the angry red strobes switched to blue and then green. She thought in a moment of morbid humor that she was now almost indistinguishable from the partygoers, but was mostly too busy wriggling from her collar to do much about that. _No shifting,_ she reminded herself, and finally pulled it around her head with an audible _pop._

Invi had gotten up by now, but Aventurine swung the long chain into his chin and he went down again. Every time he scrambled forward or tried to stand from his pathetic position on his backside, she just drove him back with an idle swing of the chain, whose blow he didn't seem to have liked.

In a last burst of desperation, Invi tried rolling to the side, but Aventurine had seen it coming. She slammed her right foot into his soft chest and put all her weight into it. Fully prehensile toes were interesting, she mused to herself as she gripped the khao's loose top, unintentionally pulling at the bandages underneath.

"This — this isn't fair!" Invi gasped, his voice high and manic. "You had that thing, and — "

"If it was fair when you agreed to this, it's fair now," Aventurine snapped. "Call off the execution. You've lost."

She could see the battle in his wide, young eyes. If he kept fighting, he could get even more hurt, perhaps killed, and his friends might get caught in the crossfire. He knew he couldn't win against a quartz, not alone. But if he surrendered, there was a good chance he might lose his chance for rebellion forever, and even if he didn't, his friends might lose confidence in him as a leader.

There was only one thing she could do for any of this — a way to both get what she wanted and get this kid on her good side for the trip. It wasn't pleasant and she'd have to lie like a rug. But that was typical. She made sure she had his eyes locked in hers and forced the widest and friendliest smile she could muster (which turned out to be only a slight upward twitch in her normal scathing glare), and then, against every particle of common sense in her body, she stepped off Invi's chest and held out her hand.

With physical wariness to match everything her logical mind thought at the moment, Invi accepted the help and stood awkwardly at her side. A confused murmuring swept across the anxious crowd, and Aventurine raised her voice nearly to in-combat levels as she lifted Invi's hand into the air. "You who face me today. You, who follow this young man in his quest for what he believes is right — "

She let the chain drop from her hand.

"You should all be honored to have a khao of such strength as your leader. While I do not support your endeavor, I am amazed to see such determination and prowess in a young person, and he has earned my respect."

The lie was cold through her teeth. A good thing that the Diamond Authority would never hear of this.

"What?" Invi croaked. Aventurine just slapped him casually on his thin shoulder, very close to putting actual force into it.

"You fought well, lad, and accepted your loss as any respectable tactician would. Now...if you could tell your pilots to set a course for Amphitri, and get those wounds of yours dressed, perhaps I could reconsider your offer on the party and we can talk like gems."

He stared at her in what was perhaps awe, and then down at himself. His torn shirt slipped down his arm and revealed those oft-wrapped bandages again, more disheveled now, and revealing an ugly band of bruises that the boy rushed to cover. "Don't," Aventurine put her hand on his shoulder again, a little more sincerely this time. "Bandages for an extended period of time will cause more damage than they're worth. Spend a little money on a certified wrap."

Invi opened his mouth in surprise, then closed it, and nodded. "En...enjoy the party, quartz," he murmured, and then limped away.

Mostly out of habit from being around organic beings too long, Aventurine exhaled as she nodded in response. Around her, the slightly disgruntled party guests seemed to realize that they had hit another dead end in their quest to create anarchy on their home planet and retreated back to their drinks and dance partners. Soon, the makeshift arena was a dance floor again. Someone shoved a red cup in her hand, filled with a sloshing green liquid that smelled like excretion.

After looking at it for two seconds she put the entire thing in her mouth and slumped against the wall.

She'd enjoy it, all right.


	4. The Red Capes Are Coming

**throw my body into the sun**

* * *

 **IV.** **The Red Capes Are Coming — Hans Zimmer, Junkie XL**

* * *

More accurately, however, Aventurine loathed the trip with every fiber of her being and spent most of it asleep.

It was to be a very _long_ trip, as the freighter-turned-party-boat for one hundred hormonal khaoi was old and broken in more places than the turquoise's ship. The freighter was so out of shape that it couldn't even handle basic hyperlight travel, leaving it to putter along at the massively slow kilolight speed and multiplying the length of the journey from two Homeworld rotations to forty-seven.

Aventurine wondered about her pearl. The freighter's communications were disabled for security purposes but she could still see public Homeworld broadcasts, and most of them said that she was missing. Those were actually kind of depressing, because after a couple rounds of those reports, no one talked about her anymore. Would Nacre hold a pearl if she had heard that the owner was lost forever in the vacuum of space? What happened to unclaimed pearls past their pickup dates? When...exactly...was that pickup date again? And — Aventurine grew cross with herself just for worrying about this as she reclined her legs in the too-small resting quarters — what would Nacre think of her? Despite renewing her appearance modifiers, Aventurine was sure she looked disgusting.

After Invi had declared a truce, the party just slipped back into its natural ebb and flow and accepted Aventurine as one of the masses. Perhaps it wasn't her sort of thing, but both quartzes and adolescent khaoi are forgiving with a few drinks, and after several hours, Aventurine stumbled to her borrowed sleeping chambers dizzy and with glitter in places glitter should never be. She had felt ready to poof.

So, not unlike many of the ship's other residents, Aventurine collapsed and snored for several days.

She kept to herself for the rest of the forty-seven days for obvious reasons. Sober khaoi were less lenient. But if she stayed out of their way, and they stayed out of hers, no one would get hurt — this was difficult because Aventurine had returned to her eight-foot-tall form and routinely got stuck in doorways. To prevent embarrassing run-ins like this, she had taken to only leaving her quarters during the "night" portion of the diurnal cycle. Sure, the ship wasn't exactly her vacation pod back on Ferrade, but it had an almost quartz-sized gym, and she busied herself with exercise every cycle until the pilots announced arrival.

The farewell company was less than warm, more stagnant, like the swamps of 9B Yrthepid. Since landing the freighter would mean paying the infamous Homeworld parking fees, they sent Aventurine out a small service craft accompanied by three technicians and Invi, who were going down for errands. After a little dispute, they agreed to drop her in Facet Two, which was the most upscale of Amphitri's seven, but which was most likely to have small-scale warps.

Aventurine parted from the khaoi with a two-fingered salute before hesitantly taking to the shining sidewalks of Facet Two. Normally, she would be fine with such a controlled environment, among the glittering storefronts and flowering palms of this lovely resort planet, the bustling of nobility and military all around her, _her_ people. The weather was gorgeous, with blue skies and clear blue water all around the floating city. The air of privilege was thick in this place and it showed in each critical gleaming eye, the flowing pristine skirts of elites as they streamed past her in groups.

And as they stared.

Despite Aventurine's vicious attempts to look presentable before she'd left the freighter, fifty days without access to real cosmetic supplies can take a real number on a gem. Her hair had about fifty knots in it and a weird sticky spot that wouldn't go away even after she tried shifting it out. She probably stunk of organic adolescent. The glitter on her clothes, her military wear of all things, refused to come out. What a sight she must be.

Like most commercial centers, Facet Two had a nice information booth not far from the port where she had begun. Also like most commercial centers there was a line. She wasn't sure if she liked Amphitri better than her similar resort planet of Ferrade, because while Ferrade was dull as dirt, at least she didn't have to stand in line for anything. Amphitri reeked of patient judgment — though it was a _short_ line, the gems in front of and behind refused to stand within a six foot radius of her and it made her angry.

"Next," the bored voice from behind the booth droned for the third time and the bismuth in front of her moved aside. Aventurine stepped forward a little too hard, the sound loud enough to make the booth attendant actually glance up.

"I need a private warp to the Mother of Pearls. There wasn't one in the main port."

The attendant, a young kyanite with a triangular eye gem, wasn't even trying to act like she cared. "Mother of Pearl," she repeated and typed it into her screen. Then she shook her head. "Sorry to break it to you, stud, but looks like she's taken her warp offline. Somethin' about security."

"Isn't there a public warp that goes somewhere near her?"

"I — I don't know!" The kyanite rubbed her forehead. "Look, quartz, there's nothing I can do. The Mother took her warp offline, means she's not expecting visitors. There's no need to fly off the handle."

However, there was much need to fly off the handle. For the first time in fifty days, which was impressive for a quartz and actually a personal record, Aventurine lost her temper.

"Look, runt," she growled. "I have fought my way through hell and back to find that swindler and get what I ordered. I have made deals with pirates. I shot myself out of an airlock. I got stuck in _doorways_ on my way here and I am _not_ being stopped by an Out Of Order sign."

All this time she had been advancing over the desk until she was nearly nose-to-nose with the small attendant, whose once bored eye was now very wide. A quick glance behind her revealed that the gems in line were beginning to stare as well, notably, a young carnelian grinning for a fight. Just then Aventurine realized what she was doing, how far forward she had leaned, and how just the glowing whispers of mass were beginning to take shape under her fingers. She dispelled them, her cheeks hot.

"Just get me the information."

"Y...yes, ma'am." It was probably the first time in that kyanite's sorry existence that she had called another gem _ma'am._ Her fingers flew over the keypad. "Warp 2CE is your best bet, though there's a – a short swim down."

Warp 2CE. "Thank you," she responded shortly, though the words sounded feeble after yelling the poor attendant back into the ground. Really, it wasn't the gemling's fault, just probably a very long shift and lack of interest in her job, which _was_ her fault and she needed to learn how to handle it, but these young gems were so busy and single-minded enough. And...maybe the military-style smackdown _had_ been a little over the top. After a hesitation, Aventurine dropped a handful of tenth-credits into the kyanite's empty tip jar before storming away.

She returned to the port and entered the warp hub with only some difficulty in convincing the cheap emerald at the gate that she wasn't a defective unit straight from battle and no that wasn't khaoi fur on her pants, all right maybe it was, but she would deal with that later. (The nonplussed emerald still warped with her for "security insurance".) Once emerging from the warp onto an identically tropical resort plane, she was left to fend for herself. Great, because there was no tourist information booth on this comparatively smaller island and she had no idea where to go from there.

"Just a short swim down"...that could mean anything. Why didn't she ever ask follow-up questions? Frustrated, she tried to comb her mind for everything that she knew about Nacre — _makes pearls, likes water, shadier than the dark side of Ferrade, not exactly a gem, somehow still a Homeworld citizen, REALLY full of herself —_ but those were neither helpful nor new.

As she continued to ponder she came to the edge of the floating city, a partly organic shoreline of white sand held together by a complex metal "net" meant to make this island a suitable place for trade and vacationing. It made the shore useless, however, because when they had harvested this island, they had left no seafloor to decline down from it. If she were to step off the side of Facet 2, she would sink to untold depths.

 _Just a short swim down. Makes pearls… formed in water…_

The solution hit her like the wing of the turquoise's ship. It was crazy but so was Nacre, and it wasn't like Aventurine had any other options. After glancing around to see if she was alone (she wasn't, but that twitchy little beryl perched on the guard post wasn't likely to snitch), Aventurine knelt over the shore, braced herself for the shock, and plunged her head into the warm but still crisp water.

It was crystal clear, thankfully, and swarming with organic life, unthankfully. A myriad of multicolored fins flickered through the azure depths, some even approaching her before flinching away when she glared at them. About a hundred feet below her, she could make out the sandy white seafloor dotted with twisting pink plants, a few large stones, and a lapis lazuli doing underwater acrobatics. Maybe she'd be of some help — but even before Aventurine could act, the little gem was gone in a whirl of bubbles.

Ah well. She'd just have to go out on a limb again, like everything else she'd done since leaving that torture pod on Ferrade. Allowing her wet head one more glance above water, Aventurine stood and dove headfirst into the ocean.

Despite the tropical climate, the water was terribly cold as her mass plunged deep through it, even as her form automatically adjusted for the loss in heat. Her pale hair streamed behind her and got all tangled up in her mouth, but when she opened her lips, the water seared her tongue with whatever was dissolved in it. For a paranoid second she wondered if it was corrosive but then remembered the lazuli. Corrosive or no, though, she couldn't stay down here too long — as she pulled herself deeper through the cross-currents, the water pressure grew until she could feel her physical form weakening from the strain. If there was any way to beat a quartz, it was in water.

Her feet brushed the bottom of the ocean, whipping up a small cloud of loose sand as she pivoted to face the inky water behind her. The water wasn't actually inky, it was just a shadow caused by the floating island, broken only by the shifting metallic cables that tied the island down and reflected all the light they could get. It was curious, however, that the cables seemed to be lit brighter as they were farther away, suggesting that they were nearer to a strong light source.

An underwater light source.

Aventurine ignored all the basic training rules that told her not to go in dark uncharted places and pushed herself towards the darkness, illuminating the places where she stepped with her gem but mostly relying on powerful breaststrokes to propel herself through the water. The light grew brighter as she moved further through the depths, but it also attracted large silhouetted things that she tried to avoid, and could feel watching her from where they lurked in the shadows.

At last she pulled herself over a rocky ridge and found the light source in the valley beneath, a brilliant glass dome laced with iridescent bobbing lights.

The front airlock, a great arching silver thing that was tall enough for even a diamond, was locked and unattended, so she circled the half mile-wide dome until she located a small mechanic's porthole and squeezed herself through it. Sopping wet, smelling like dissolved sucrose, and STILL covered in glitter, Aventurine dropped onto the artificial turf. The facility, while so large, was hauntingly empty. "Tch," she made a small disgruntled noise and stomped across a bed of garish pastel flora to reach the front door, which was sealed until she kicked at it and broke the flimsy locking mechanism. Ugh. The Mother of Pearl's facility might look pretty, but it was cheap and impractical.

The spacious anteroom was all but deserted with a reception desk at the back manned by a single white pearl. When Aventurine had broken the door down she had jumped up in alarm, and when the quartz was just about to ask where was the Mother, the little thing pivoted and flitted behind a gossamer curtain. "Hey, wait!" Aventurine called out, and despite the sign reading _Please wait to be attended_ she ducked under the receptionist's back door and chased the pearl.

Pearls were faster than she remembered. By the time she had forced her extra-extra-large frame through the medium door, the last trace of the receptionist was a tutu vanishing through an opening at the end of the hall. Only by shuffling sideways was Aventurine able to pursue her further, and after an infuriating amount of time she burst into the gilded room with fists clenched and legs sore from crouching.

And looked up to see the Mother of Pearls gaping at her.

Like any quartz, Aventurine was trained to observe her surroundings before making any unnecessary actions, and as she stomped up to the Mother she just barely took in that the spacious but bare marble room must have been a personal office. A few large iridescent bubbles bobbed around the corners, all filled with office supplies and other trinkets. The owner held one of them just then in her spindly hand, the other hand on the shoulder of the cowering receptionist who came up only to her waist.

"You're not...dead," the Mother of Pearls said slowly. Aventurine scowled.

"Disappointed?"

At that, Nacre's face went from surprised to indifferent again. "You're _late,"_ she corrected herself. She warped her bubble with a practiced flick of the wrist and folded her hands in front of her — fiddling with a ring. It was just then that Aventurine noticed two other white pearls standing in the corners, who floated behind their Mother and goggled at Aventurine.

"There was a comet storm," listed Aventurine, becoming suddenly very aware that she was dripping seawater on the marble floors, "and a kidnapping, and children, and single combat, and a kyanite."

"That's no excuse — "

"And your warp's offline," she added helpfully. "And the door was locked."

Four pairs of opalescent eyes, three staring, one glaring, were focused on her as if trying to make her uncomfortable, but she wouldn't have it. By now she was just irritated. "I want my order," she insisted and took a step towards Nacre. Aventurine was just a handspan shorter than the woman, but thicker, and neither backed down from the silent threats that submerged between them.

Then Nacre straightened her back further and blinked. "Take it, then," she responded airily. "There's a holding room in corridor 7-Sierra. I'll accept your final payments now but I won't wait around. I have more important obligations than waiting for a deadbeat quartz."

Aventurine was going to snap something back but controlled herself, reached to the pouch at her belt, and dug out all the money she had. Nacre accepted it piece by piece, counted, and then bubbled everything away — just as Aventurine remembered the extra bits she'd wanted to save for other things. "Wait, I need my change," she protested, but the Mother didn't budge.

"Your interest rates were much higher than this pathetic change. I'm doing you a favor," she said, and then turned and strode to the back of the room with suspicious speed. "Girls?"

The three pearls scampered after her and pulled the bubbles of trinkets behind them, warping them each with bowed heads. And as Aventurine stood in the center of the now empty room, slightly annoyed and slightly confused, Nacre ascended onto the private warp pad and faced her with an ethereal, if not haughty, gaze.

"Thank you for your business," she said before she and her three pearls warped away.


	5. The Prelude

**eggs are good**

* * *

 **V. The Prelude — Tyler Dever and Erik Scheele**

* * *

When a gem is forced to retreat into the core of her being and then put in a bubble, the experience is akin to flying an agility transport as fast as it can go and suddenly being met by a brick wall. If the gem is engineered for fast and automatic reformation, like a quartz or corundum, this effect is greater (same mass x more acceleration = more force) and can add weeks to her reformation time even if she is taken out of the bubble. For gems with slow, calculated reformations focusing more on mental or cosmetic enhancement, such as olivines or beryls, it's more akin to falling into a wall of pillows, so she reforms as soon as she is taken out of the bubble.

It's not quite as easy for defective or misshapen gems. In that case, it's not a straight shot towards anything; it's a maze or twisted path with walls on either side, and to be bubbled is to erect a dead end right in front of the exit. The gem will reform as normal, albeit with extra care to not get lost or crash into a wall, making an imperfect reformation, but once reaching the place labeled as _EXIT,_ she will find the dead end and simply stare at it. Depending on her temperament she might try to re-navigate the maze. If she is only bubbled for a short time, she might never have that chance. Either way, the gem is often left leaning against the dead end, confused and thoughtful, until the dead end gives out and leaves her to fall backwards.

For the second of my constituents, the second representation was more accurate, and she fell out of the sky with hardly any idea of what had just happened to her.

The young pearl had never reformed before, except for when she had first emerged from her soft cool shell. But this wasn't like anything she had ever felt before — this was cold, yes, but it was a dark juxtaposition to her shining birth, an event under silken white sheets and in shimmering sea foam. Now, her bare feet touched rough-hewn stone, her dress provided the only warmth in the thick but icy air, and even before her form solidified from light she knew it was very dark. She touched her face and felt tears there. She couldn't remember why.

Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and saw that she had fallen to her knees, in a small circle of blue light from somewhere behind her. A spotlight. With no order to follow, she hadn't put thought into her reformation and came out the thing that was comfortable, a loose modest shirt and a supple, ankle-length dress that pooled on the floor beneath her. Her ovaline gem, set into the soft top of her left foot, caught the light as a dark green with shallow rings circling its width at the top and center. She had three of these carved rings, and found herself idly tracing the deepest one with her finger.

She couldn't remember how long it had been, or if she had been supposed to keep track of time inside her gem, or even if she could. So many things had happened in her short life that she didn't know how she could hold more. When she had emerged, it had been quietly with her head tilted high, and had fallen much the same as now before a pooling hem of white silk. And the first face she had seen was the face of her Mother, staring not in satisfaction, but rather in an emotion she would later name as disgust. She hadn't been prepared for a ringed pearl, whatever that meant. Especially not one like _her._

"That cracked general had better be missing for good," she had finished with a snap, "or you'll be in for it. And I — oh, what will they say!"

Despite the vague warning, the Mother had pressed and perfected her last pearl to what she claimed to be the best of her ability, training her in shiny things that whirled around her head and made her dizzy. Frills and fluff, dancing in shoes that pinched her toes. Endless lessons of Things to Say — and frustration from all sides when she failed to repeat a single one. She had to be perfect for a phantom being called "her quartz". And she tried, she really did, but she must have done something wrong because rotations passed, her quartz didn't come, and Mother grew more agitated. Finally, without a second glance or explained word other than a sigh, her Mother had driven a silver dagger through her chest and left her here, wherever this was, whenever.

Someone coughed and she jumped, suddenly aware that she wasn't alone.

For a second she feared that it was Mother, but the figure who loomed above her stood quite differently. This gem, she noticed first, had a light green cabochon set into her left foot much the same as her own, and held her hands tense by her sides. _She is like the jasper,_ Pearl thought suddenly, the soldier who had come in to speak with her Mother just a few moments after she had been born. A form that radiated power, stature that made Pearl want to curl her body in and stay there for a very long time. Her hair seemed very soft though, and it framed her noble face in asymmetrical feathery locks. Her clothes and some of her dark green skin was scattered with little bits of light like stardust.

She wondered if this was the cracked general — she didn't look cracked, in fact, this gem looked perfectly healthy if not a bit surprised. Perhaps...could it be her quartz? Unsure of what to do, Pearl shifted and reviewed the list: one, service; two, silence; three, submission. She was a servant to her quartz and was to do whatever she was told, but that hadn't made sense, because was the general a different person from her quartz? Was this gem her quartz, not the general?

It would be a very good time to ask a question, she felt, but Rule Two was silence. The large gem with the nice hair seemed to understand this. Even though she was already very close, she bent down on one knee and offered out an open hand.

The gesture probably had some sort of meaning because after a short while, during which Pearl just looked at it, the larger gem reached down and slipped her hand out from where she had been stroking her skirt. The touch was rough and her fingers swallowed Pearl's, but she moved with care as Pearl got to her feet and stared up at her. Pearl was still half the other gem's height.

"Do you understand me?" the gem asked at last. This was a rough voice like the hands, but somehow still rich and deep and sweet in tone. Pearl was not sure if it was just the dim light, but the gem appeared to have blue eyes.

After turning the question over in her mind, she jerked her head in a nod. The other gem grunted.

"Can't you speak?"

Pearl did not know how to answer this question. She had never spoken before but Rule Two suggested that she did not need to try. Could she break it if the gem insisted she did? She didn't want to risk it. So she said nothing, only stared.

After a long, progressively more awkward pause, the gem grunted again, put her hand heavily on Pearl's shoulder, and steered her towards the open door. "I suppose that's fine," she said in a way that hinted that it probably wasn't, and then, "I believe I own you now. I am General Aventurine, Facet One, and you may call me anything except insults. And for the record — "

General Aventurine, Facet One stopped in the doorway, turned fully to face Pearl, and leaned down so that their noses were nearly touching. She smelled strange, like seawater, but also something new that she'd later come to learn as the lingering stench of organic life.

"I don't want you. I hardly even paid for you, I didn't have any idea of what you'd be like, and I can tell you're not exactly happy here either, but we're going to make the best of this situation, all right? I came a very long way and faced many strange things to get to you. I'd like to get my time and money's worth, but I can't think of anything you can do except keep me company, so while you're in my hands I give you permission to do whatever your little heart desires. Am I clear?"

It was clear, yes, but while the words themselves were easily defined, the message altogether made only the vaguest of sense. This must be her quartz. Therefore, Pearl was to take everything she said in the highest regards. From Aventurine's tone, she meant well, but was generally unhappy about things. Perhaps she was… disappointed? Was that the word? And what was she disappointed about? Was she unhappy with Pearl? Panicking, Pearl reflected back on the things Mother had drilled into her before leaving her bubbled in an abandoned storeroom: there was nothing about what to do if her owner did not want her from the start. Only that her quartz _would_ be happy with her, or she would live in shame forever.

There was only one course of action from here. She had to make Aventurine want her. She had no idea how, but she _would._ Pearl looked up at her quartz and met her tired blue eyes, eyes that reflected years without number and the finite reflection of Pearl's own young face, just one of probably millions — how terrifying to think that while Pearl was only a small part of Aventurine's important life, Aventurine was Pearl's entire existence. It was in that time that Pearl swore — she may not understand, but she would make her small part one that the ancient quartz would never forget.

In response, with more assertion in the one action than for anything else in her so far brief life, Pearl nodded, and bowed her head subserviently.

Of course Aventurine didn't hear any of this and spent no more time dwelling in an abandoned corridor than she needed to, and pulled Pearl's tiny hand again in her large one. "Good," was all she said and began walking. Pearl almost had to run in order to match the long, powerful strides.

They came to the Mother's office, a place open only to the Mother herself and the Inner Circle, the three bossy pearls grown by her in order to assist around the facility and discipline newborns. Every time Pearl had passed the office, the gilded doors had been sealed shut, but now they hung open limply and revealed the naked inner sanctums of what made this place tick. Not unlike the rest of the facility, the office was rounded and soft like the inside of a shell and shimmered iridescent in the spare, bobbing lights in the arches above their heads. The Mother's curved desk, completely bare, cupped around a glittering control panel.

While Aventurine breezed across the threshold without a second thought, Pearl hesitated — though the facility seemed strangely barren, she couldn't help but fear for a dagger through her shoulder blades if she so much as breathed on the polished floor. Where _was_ the Mother? Where was the Inner Circle? Pearl hadn't realized how long she'd hesitated until Aventurine pulled at her hand and ordered her to follow.

"Wait here. I need to make a call," Aventurine explained, and gestured towards the Mother's high backed, ovaline office chair. Pearl obeyed and stood beside it, but Aventurine didn't sit down for some reason and only stomped towards the control panel, slammed her hand onto something, and jabbed a line of figures into a keypad. The office chair looked comfy but Pearl didn't dare.

A white screen soared above Pearls' head at the perfect height for Aventurine, then unfolded into a horizontal diamond. After a couple seconds a large figure appeared there. But upon setting eyes on the face, Pearl did a double take, blinked, stared at the gem on the screen, then at Aventurine, then at the screen again. The other gem blinked sleepy blue eyes, ran a tough virescent hand through a shock of mint-white hair, and glared down in annoyance.

"Gen'ral 'Venturine," the gem on the screen mumbled thickly. General Aventurine nodded.

"Sergeant Aventurine, Facet 2," she, the first Aventurine, said to the second. "I trust that I haven't interrupted important beauty sleep, have I?"

"You know I need it. Glad to see you're in one piece, by the way."

Aventurine (Pearl decided to call her only that, and the second on the screen would just be the Other) scowled, or at least, her normal frown just intensified. "Hmph."

"Is that a Tahitian pearl?"

She put her arms out in an exaggerated shrug. "How would I know?"

Now that Pearl thought about it, the Other Aventurine — though similar in facial structure and color palette — appeared to be broader around the chest and had longer hair that swept behind her shoulders. She carried this extra weight with a casual swagger that Aventurine either did not have or kept reined in. "Wait, tell me though," the Other enunciated carefully, dropping herself in her chair "why in stars you're calling from Nacre's pearl Kindergarten, and why you're dripping of glitter."

The glitter was apparently a sore subject because Aventurine shook her hand through her hair angrily and only answered the first question. "I had to pick up a pearl and that bloody charlatan took all my money in the name of _'interest'._ I didn't bring identification because I didn't know I would be shot into dead space, so I cannot open my account and pay for a ride back, and though there is a military presence on Amphitri, you know how White Diamond is about hitchhikers. You _are_ still in the area, I presume?"

"Er, yes, but unlike yours, my furlough's almost up and — "

"It wouldn't be at your inconvenience, so save your _but_ s, soldier. All I need is for you to provide a cruiser with accommodations for myself and my pearl, and once back on Ferrade I can hire a chrysoberyl to pilot it back before you leave."

"And what's wrong with Ferrade's galaxy warp? After you went missing, I was sent there to check for you. Perfect condition. Haven't they just fixed it up?"

Their conversation flowed naturally, without hesitation, as if it were just one person speaking to themselves and thinking the other's reply before it was vocalized — at least until this moment. Aventurine had opened her mouth to reply, but then her jaw went slack and whatever she had planned to say changed into a short, sharp, _"What?"_

If the Other noticed the scathing glare she did not show it. "Ah, yes, according to the ticket booth attendants, they put up the final securities just...ah, I don't recall, fifteen minutes before your ship departed? Tough luck, General."

At the word _luck,_ Aventurine tensed up. She didn't say anything for a while, just continued to channel that frightening glare towards the Other, who seemed to be getting the message that her superior was not in a good mood, and glanced to the side. Somewhere beyond the communication device's reach, perhaps past a wall, muffled raucous singing had begun and someone pounded on an unseen door so hard that Pearl flinched.

"Oh. Never mind them," the Other mumbled sheepishly just before the aforementioned door opened with a _woosh_ and the singing gems entered the view of the communication device — six quartzes of various type, pushing ahead of them a plum-colored pearl. The Other — perhaps the Second now that there were multiple — seemed cross until someone shoved the pearl half into her lap. The irritation was replaced by resignation.

"My sincerest apologies," called the Other over the racket of the rowdy quartzes, and halfheartedly tugged on the plum pearl's translucent sash. At the out of place action, Pearl found herself unable to not stare at the other pearl, just barely meeting her servile and downcast eyes. She curved in towards the Other aventurine, leaning down to whisper something in her ear that made her face soften, then quirk up in a partial grin.

"If you're _busy,_ I can arrange a better time to speak," Aventurine folded her arms over her chest. She passed a glance back to Pearl, but it was so fast she might have imagined it. On the screen, the plum pearl had begun feeding the Other some plump red berries from a bowl and the quartz shook her head.

"No, general, I really am sorry. If there's anything more I can do for you, I would be — no, we'd all be honored to — "

"Good. I need to you send in a resistance report — " met by several groans from the bystanders " — about a band of rebels above Crystal System Khaoi. About one hundred, all natives in the early adult phase of life in an old mining freighter bearing the old resistance symbol and traveling in kilospace, most likely bound from Amphitri to Khaoi; will reach their destination in about forty-seven standard rotations. Their leader is a youth answering to the name Invidian and I believe they are working under a larger authority. They are lightly armed, mostly uneducated, and have a lot of alcohol, caution advised."

"What do you want to do about them?"

"Bring them back home to their mommies and daddies. Aventurine out," she finished shortly before closing the connection.

Pearl started when Aventurine's gaze snapped over to her, dark in the shadow of her hair. She had been slouching, for one, drawing her arms into herself especially as she'd seen the other pearl, and so at the sudden attention Pearl pulled herself up like a puppet on a string and bowed her head to hide that she had been watching anything. That had been another favorite drill of the Mother's and had penalties of smarting slaps to her lower back if it was anything but straight.

But Aventurine didn't remark on this. She just frowned (did she _ever_ smile?), grunted "Come along, then", and turned away.

From instinct Pearl had begun to follow, but then the hem of her skirt brushed her ankle and she looked down. She couldn't take her mind off the plum pearl. They were so different, the two of them — the plum with her small skirt, Pearl with her modest one; the plum and her jewelry, Pearl with nothing; the plum's carved bob hair, Pearl's unkempt long locks. Even more surprising had been the reaction of the Other aventurine, not distance or aloofness such as Pearl received from General Aventurine; rather, a type of deference that _welcomed_ the presence of the plum pearl. How wonderful it would be to have that acceptance…

Just as Aventurine turned around to repeat her command, Pearl let her form glow, focused on that single image in her head, and then let herself go into light.

It cleared in a second and a lingering, sung note. Filled with a strange excitement for her new form, Pearl dropped her fingers to the hem of her dress, now falling about midway down her thigh and sleeveless just like the plum pearl's. She hadn't been able to handle a band around her thin neck, but had managed shining golden bands around her wrists, ankles, and her waist as a thin belt. The only other covering was a single gauzy sash pulled diagonally across her body and fastened by the belt, but it didn't do much to cover the chill across her otherwise-bare shoulders. When she lifted her head, a lock of black hair fell from her smooth, chin-length bob.

Meanwhile Aventurine looked on with a mix of emotions Pearl couldn't identify, one thumb hooked through her belt, head slightly tilted. She didn't look satisfied, however, and Pearl feared that she had done something wrong until she huffed her breath and shrugged.

"Cute," was all she said, and then, "Well, come along."

Pearl had never warped before and the pad was shockingly cold under her bare feet. She wasn't sure if she should hold Aventurine's hand or something, or do the warping herself to save Aventurine the energy, but she had no idea what else to do other than stand. She was just about to ask, and then reconsider asking, and then maybe possibly inquire more politely than originally intended when the warp pad glowed and Pearl found herself flying through a brilliant column of light.

The option of holding on to Aventurine seemed to be a very good one now. Pearl found herself latched around a thick waist, her small arms barely spanning the circumference but still insistent on staying that way, and even as foolish as she realized it was — especially as Aventurine's quartz instincts kicked in and she nearly backflipped Pearl into the dead of warp space. It was still better than shooting through the warp stream alone. The thought of letting go filled her with cold, pure panic.

When the world solidified around her again and gravity returned to its rightful place, Pearl found herself hugging Aventurine so tightly that her feet didn't even touch the warp pad below her. They were in a large port of some kind, in the full light of two yellow suns and the eyes of more gems than Pearl had ever seen together in her life. Hulking quartzes, elegant nobles, squat ruby guards, bony technicians and _pearls._ There was a certain type of gem that they stuck to, the ones that shimmered a little brighter than the rest, but there were so _many,_ all different colors to match their owners and in such fine silks that she became grateful for her new dress. She stared back at them with wide eyes and wondered if they were admiring her as much as she admired them, until she noticed that some were smiling behind their hands and that Aventurine had touched her shoulder. To her utter disgrace she realized she was still holding onto her quartz.

"S — sorry," she stammered and stumbled away, the first word she had ever spoken. A pathetic one. Aventurine stared for just a second before grunting and taking her by the arm.

"Just ask permission next time, alright?"

Her cheeks burned from shame, but she managed a nod. The "next time" turned out to be very soon afterwards on a much larger warp pad and thankfully Aventurine continued holding her arm, so asking wasn't necessary. This ride was comparatively smoother. Perhaps she was just getting used to it, or perhaps she was just more focused on the five other gems warping with them, including three rubies, a tall black gem she couldn't identify and who wore a hood over her head, and another dark-colored pearl wearing a transparent veil.

I realize now that they did not speak to either of my constituents from simple pride — what was a dirty quartz and her misshapen pearl to an obsidian noble? And what member of Blue Diamond's court would speak unnecessarily in a warp stream anyway? — but Pearl hadn't then, and it left her with an unsettled feeling that someone could be in such close proximity with another and not wish to know more about them. Really, she had led a very lonely life so far and her youth provided an intense desire to know everything about anyone, which if she had been a verbal gem would have annoyed her quartz. But she was still hesitant in her voice, so as the procession materialized on Ferrade's newly fixed galaxy warp, she kept her questions bottled up and trotted after Aventurine.

This planet was very different from Amphitri, yet still with the same air of elegance and authority. White grey skies so thick they could be solid — and beyond the dome of the city, the ground was grey too. There was a sharp wind that blew her skirt around her. She decided to infringe on the custom of folded hands and padded the skirt down with her palms, glancing towards Aventurine to see if she minded, but her quartz didn't even notice. Her thick hair whipped across her face and she grumbled once more.

"I hate this planet," Aventurine said, not for the last time. "But get used to it. We have one hundred years."

One hundred years? It sounded like forever to Pearl, but Aventurine passed it off like a few minutes. Supposedly it was just a short furlough for her, after which her quartz would go back to her military duties. And…then what? Would Pearl wait here on Ferrade, or accompany her into battle — no, that was a silly thought, like forging a shield out of glass. She was too fragile for that. Perhaps there was a reason one hundred years felt long to pearls...were they meant to last much longer?

She felt the melancholy wondering coming on once more and she shook her head as followed Aventurine out of the port. There was a sleek silver thing in a sort of rack, she didn't quite know how to describe it save for the green plush seat and the gleaming array of dials and switches between its handles: these were particularly enticing. It was a beautiful craft despite the thin layer of dust on its matte silver finish. And Pearl was allowed to push it along the walkways as they wound through the city, what an honor to even see, let alone touch!

Once outside the city, Aventurine mounted the cruiser and helped Pearl up also. Since the cruiser was specially built for someone of quartizine proportions, Pearl slipped easily in at the front of the seat with plenty of room and in the perfect place to set her hands on the handlebars.

"In case you ever need to...run an errand or something," Aventurine instructed, "most likely you'll use this or one like it. I might have a smaller one back at the pod, and I doubt the controls would be too much different. Handlebars here, pull either side to turn, like so; that gauge is for power, that one's for speed in klicks per hour. The compass here's been calibrated for this planet, so when you're on this hemisphere, the silver arrow points towards home."

Pearl found her voice again. "Home?"

"The pod."

"Why?"

"The geology of this planet, I believe. The core is magnetic and irregularly shaped. My pod is nearby — you'll know it when you see it."

Pearl wondered if the _"it"_ referred to the pod or the core, though it didn't make sense to mention the planet's core as something you could see. She dismissed the worry and focused instead on staying on the cruiser, which was just a little too wide to ride comfortably. As if she had done it hundreds of times, Aventurine lifted the gravity lock and they sped across the dusty grey plains.

(She actually hadn't and they have both agreed to admit that, but at the time, Pearl had been in such awe of everything that it was all the same to her.)

It didn't take long for Pearl to recognize exactly what "it" was, and that it was the core — in the form of a shallow upward slope that protruded from the horizon so gently that you could hardly differentiate it from the ground. She didn't know much about geology except that that didn't look quite right, and that it gave her a very uneasy feeling. It didn't make her any less uneasy that they seemed to be flying directly towards it; more specifically, to a small shining spot at its base, but nonetheless too close for comfort.

As they stopped at the shining spot and entered the grounds through a massive crystalline gate, Pearl tried to distract herself from the looming core by focusing on the pod instead. Really, the term "pod" didn't do it justice. A great ring of artificial turf surrounded the gleaming white palace, overgrown but not ugly and...actually matching the color scheme of her quartz, perhaps even aesthetically so if it were pruned. All these flora and carvings were matte white, bearing geometric designs but no imagery; only the elaborate fountain and circular pool at the very front of the mansion bore sculpture. It was of a tall woman draped in fabric, with a chiseled noble face and slender neck, and holding her carved hands symmetrically around a diamond on her chest.

The place was smaller than Mother's facility, but grander. Pearl couldn't help but keep her neck craned up as Aventurine led her up the front steps and through a set of pillars that opened into a cathedral-like corridor, their feet echoing with crisp clicks across the carved white stone. Translucent, pale green gossamer curtains floated in a faint breeze, one brushing her cheek when she was looking the other way, and against her better judgment she stretched out her hand and ran her fingers across its silky folds.

"It's so...pretty," she whispered. She could hardly believe this was the place where she would spend the next hundred years. Aventurine glanced back at her but didn't slow her pace.

"It's just standard," she shrugged. The acoustics of the mansion gave a new type of depth to her resonant voice. "Didn't Nacre tell you what to expect?"

The words did not make much sense. Pearl frowned. Mother _had_ told her, yes, she just hadn't put the two things together. She wasn't sure what it had meant anyway. "Mother told me that you lived like a 'rodent'," she offered, hoping it would be of some help. "Is that a type of elite?"

As she watched Aventurine's face, the quartz went from a normal frown to a look of scandal, then back to the frown. Except now it seemed more intense and was accompanied by a dissatisfied, deep-throated grumble. "I hate that woman," she just said and pushed aside another curtain.

They stepped into open air again, standing beside a large glassy pool that was perfectly clear besides a few stringy, brownish leaves accumulated around its sides. "I'm not really sure what they had in mind when they built this place," commented Aventurine wearily as she turned to a small, curtained alcove along the side of the pool. "But there are a few of these private rooms. Choose whichever one you want and feel free to explore the grounds if you wish."

"Ah — are you feeling unwell? Where are you going?" burst Pearl against her inhibitions. With tired eyes and slow movement, Aventurine turned and looked down to her.

"I am going to be _by myself_ , Pearl, and I am going to be there for a very long time."

And she disappeared behind the thick curtain, saying nothing else, and leaving Pearl alone in the palace.


	6. Firefly Cloud

**aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa**

* * *

 **VI. Firefly Cloud — Erik Scheele**

* * *

It became apparent to Pearl that, despite any desires to please her quartz, Aventurine was not in the mood to accept coddling. Well… "not" implied that she had not been _at the time_. A more accurate term was probably "never".

After Aventurine had retreated behind the curtain that forbade opening, Pearl stood outside of it for a very long time. Not facing it, obviously. This was something that she remembered from her short training — Mother would go inside a room by herself and a pearl was to stand outside of it, to the side so that if she were to burst out of it suddenly, the pearl would not be in the way, and facing away from the door so as to meet any gem coming towards them. So this was how Pearl stood while she thought through Aventurine's parting words.

 _Choose a room and explore the grounds if you wish._ There were two problems with that sentence: _choose_ and _if you wish._ You couldn't just tell a newborn pearl that and expect her to know what to do with it; no internalized classism intended, but it was true. It was like telling someone with depression to stop being sad or asking a poofed gem to fight a war. They weren't ready. They _couldn't_ choose what to do. They needed patience and retraining and time.

But Aventurine hadn't thought of that, and the closest thing to free will that Pearl had settled for was the thought that at least Aventurine had said it as an imperative — with a little stretch, Pearl was able to make out the sentence into a command. _You MUST choose a room. You MUST explore the grounds._

I mean...everyone starts somewhere.

After about two hours, during which Pearl heard nothing from Aventurine's private chambers, she decided it was probably safe to make good on the offer of exploration. Her quartz had been right; there were other alcoves around the glassy pool that could be closed off with thick curtains for privacy. Each contained a few decorative plants, a table, and a small sloping platform that she believed was used for relaxation, not that she ever intended to use them. It was a very simply furnished place, looking like new, probably from Aventurine's solitude which wouldn't require her to use more than one alcove at a time.

She dipped her toe into the water of the pool, sending out a circular ripple and disturbing some of the dead leaves. Those bothered her. Conveniently, there was a flat, long-handled net inside a small closet along with other cleaning supplies, and Pearl used it to clean the leaves out. Some of the water spattered her pretty dress, so she decided to dismiss it in favor of her default long skirt and just wear that while she tidied up. Scoop out the leaves, mop up the water from the shiny tiles, polish the pool railings, straighten the furnishings, prune the plants. She couldn't help it but she hummed a bit while she did it, too.

She couldn't find a wastebasket for the leaves so she just hid them underneath one of the relaxation platforms and hoped she remembered to take care of them later.

With the damp hem of her work skirt (she would call it that) swishing around her ankles, Pearl slipped out of the courtyard and returned to the silent corridors. The place was tidy but, similar to the courtyard, evidenced that no one had used it for quite a while. Light dust drifted in the corners and, as a dazzling golden sun broke through the clouds and shone through the pillars and skylights, spun up in glittering flecks when she swept it up. Yes, it had been nice before, but once she was done with the superficial dusting, it was _beautiful_ — not perfect, but getting there.

Before she realized it, she had given the same treatment to the other eleven halls and three courtyards she found, and sat weary on the front steps as she hummed a meaningless tune to herself. Her skin and skirt were covered in dust that she longed to wash off but she didn't dare touch the beautiful fountains or the pools besides to clean them. Though as she gazed across the overgrown gardens, she realized that she had failed to close the garage after parking Aventurine's cruiser — and that the garage housed a small sink under a rack of very shiny gardening supplies.

Both offers were too tempting to pass up.

Despite her sore feet, Pearl found new vigor as she connected the beautiful tools and the misfitting grounds. It was actually quite relaxing to garden. The first part, cutting the artificial turf, was rather exciting as she figured out the trimming machine, a large loud vehicle that threatened to throw her to the ground but which had fun buttons and dials that allowed her to cut every sprig of turf to the exact same length as she liked it. Pulling the weeds was difficult, as any weeds that were present had mutated to survive in the apparently "anti-weed" flora. The pads of her fingers were raw and sore after that. But then came detail work, the aesthetic of the tasks. Trimming plants felt and sounded satisfying; it also made her very proud to step back and see a shrub exactly how she'd wanted. She especially enjoyed taking care of the flowers. They were pretty white and blue things of all shapes and sizes, commingling in their abandonment, but Pearl simply had to dig up their shallow cone-shaped roots and rearrange them.

It was during this task that she went from humming to singing, a wordless patternless melody that was crisp and sustained in the warm breeze. She had put on a large hat from the garage but left her hands bare. It was so much more _real_ to feel the cool, loose dirt underneath her fingertips, to hold her precious flowers close to her nose and breathe in life. She would later learn that it was the smell of earth.

Her singing tapered off in her throat as she became aware of something different, perhaps a sound soft enough to register, but not loud enough to recognize; maybe just the anxious sixth sense built into servant gems. Whatever it was, it made her almost drop her bell-shaped white blossom as she spun around. She instantly saw what she had been looking for — a tall, thick figure leaning against the front pillars. Watching her.

Aventurine held Pearl's gaze for just a second before turning and vanishing back into the house. Part of Pearl wanted to drop everything and chase after her, but before she had whipped off her sunhat she knew it was a lost cause. If Aventurine wanted to speak with her, she would have said something. That's how speaking worked...right? Oh stars this was too hard. From what she had gathered from her solemn owner, Aventurine was not looking for reasons to use Pearl, not searching for places where she fell short, not snatching every opportunity to make her cry — drastically unlike the standards of her Mother and the Inner Circle.

But she could never be too careful. So she turned back to her flowers, realized that her hands shook, and bit her tongue.

Time passed quickly when she was gardening and she finished within a standard rotation, having pruned every shrub, flower, and blade of grass on the ten acres. It probably also didn't feel long because the planet did not rotate. As she returned to the mansion, she didn't see Aventurine at all, so she assumed her quartz had returned to her private chamber. Unless she also entered the other rooms lining the corridors, but since she hadn't pointed them out in her tour, Pearl assumed that they were of no importance and she must not bother with them.

 _You must not bother with them...yet,_ amended a quiet voice in her head as she caught sight of a door that, unlike the flimsy curtains of the mansion, was carved of white stone. It had a triangular panel set into its frame and she suspected that it wouldn't respond to her touch, but it slid open at the slightest brush of her palm.

Pearl hadn't expected much, but her first impression of the room was...well, not much. There were no windows and didn't seem to be a control panel for lights but there was nothing to look at. No furnishings or decor, just cold walls and floors. In the corner of her eye, she swore she saw something glitter, something very small and _moving,_ but it had been so quick that she hadn't even had the time to be afraid. It was only once she thought about it that it unnerved her. She began singing again to dispel that awful, clenching fear, and as she closed the door it worked...for a time. She couldn't ignore the thought that they were not alone in the mansion.

The second room she checked was similarly empty. The third had windows and held an impressive array of solid weapons, many of which were larger than her entire body. They were scary. But...they were dusty, so she spent the next few hours rubbing their tempered heads until they shone. The most difficult had been an enormous spear hanging diagonally on the longest wall — the spearhead alone was broad enough for Pearl to lay across it.

After that Pearl was kind of tired of cleaning. Aventurine's alcove was closed off again, though, and she assumed with a naughty child's logic that if the quartz didn't see it the quartz didn't have to know of it. (Even though her guilt still stung.) So she returned to the first courtyard and to the little alcove she had partially claimed as her own, and she pulled the curtain over the opening the block the sun. And she sat.

Pearl had just lain back and closed her eyes when she was thrown off the platform.

Dizzy and frightened, Pearl scrambled off the ground and threw her arms around a nearby pillar. The ground was _shaking —_ she hadn't even known ground could do that! — so much that the reclining platforms bounced on the marble floor and the water in the pool sloshed out. A curtain fluttered as Aventurine barreled out of her alcove and skidded to a stop by the poolside, somehow able to keep her footing even as she had taken off her military boots. She had shouted something to Pearl but she couldn't hear over the roar of what she felt was impending death.

And as soon as it had started, it was over.

For a few seconds, Pearl's arms were locked around the pillar and she could only take them away very slowly. Once she stood independently on solid ground, she looked back at Aventurine, phased out of her work dress and into her nice one — and threw herself at her quartz with the same clinging terror of her first warp pad journey. She couldn't help it. Aventurine moved and Pearl flinched as she began to regret her action, but nothing came except a sigh and a surprisingly gentle hand on her back.

"You're awful jumpy for a young one," Aventurine commented. "Come along. Let's find out what that was."

She led Pearl to a fourth solid door adjacent to the courtyard, whose room was similar to the armory in its tall, airy windows. The main attraction (besides a plant in front of the entrance) was a shining control panel and high-backed chair similar to Mother's, where Aventurine reclined and pulled herself up to the panel, which glowed a soft green at her touch.

"Right, this must be it," she muttered as the screen rose up before them and a white notification appeared in the corner. A flick of the wrist unfolded a video onto the big screen.

 _Addressed to All Homeworld Citizens Stationed on Crystal System 33 Ferrade_ (announced a monotoned white gem in the video).

 _At 2507 Standard Time of Standard Date 15 01 8, a seismic disturbance was detected at the pole of the solar hemisphere. The disturbance has been classified as category 3 as no architectural damage has been reported. The cause of the disturbance is yet unknown and we will inform the public of new developments as soon as they are available._

 _All Homeworld citizens are advised to return to their pods and await further safety clearance._

 _All Homeworld employees are ordered to report to their posts at once._

 _Thank you for your cooperation and service._

The newscaster rose her hands in a diamond over her chest before the screen went dark.

"Seis...smic disturbance," Pearl sounded out the strange syllables, rolling them around her tongue. It was unintentionally very loud.

"They're common on undeveloped planets," Aventurine explained. "I don't know why they occur, but...during my time on Crystal System Earth, I once escorted a team of nesosilicates analyzing their patterns. Curious?"

Pearl nodded in opinionless agreement until she realized that it had been a question. "Yes," she amended carefully, "I would...like to be more informed, so I am not...scared. If there are more."

"You understand, then, that learning about your fear is the easiest way to overcome it."

Not in quite those words, but Pearl understood. Though the mantra would need some alteration when her fear was the fear of the unknown. "Yes."

Aventurine tapped the panel and flicked through a set of diamond-shaped files. _Someone really likes diamonds,_ Pearl thought to herself, just as Aventurine opened a document with text like grains of sand.

"Right, here's one," she announced and left her chair. "Go crazy. I doubt I'm going back to bed."

Pearl was just that close to asking where bed was but Aventurine had left with seemingly no intention of turning back. She did seem adamant about keeping Pearl busy here. Feebly, she reached onto the panel and mimicked Aventurine's flicking hand motions, making the page suddenly vanish from sight, and giving her a new challenge as she tried to find it again. (It took five minutes and a bit of crying.) Eventually she got it though, and even figured out an extra feature that read the page aloud for her in a digitized voice.

I don't recall the technicalities of the message — who would? A beryl wrote it, for stars' sakes — but Pearl did find what she was looking for. According to the logs, and looking past the poetry that comes with using beryls, seismic disturbances were normal events for planets that were less than 33% stabilized. (Pearl assumed this included Ferrade.) Apparently, many planets were not solid at all, but rather made up of "plates" floating on the soft mantle layer around the core. Seismic disturbances happened when these plates moved and ground against each other. That was why the ground felt as if it were shaking.

Once she had learned this, Pearl sat back in satisfaction. It hadn't comforted her that the shaking ground was actually giant plates grinding against each other, or that they were floating on a sea of molten rock, but it felt good to know something. Also she could work the control panel! But to her utter horror, she found that she had been sitting in Aventurine's large chair, and jumped out with a gasp at herself.

She left the office proud of her new knowledge but still slightly ashamed at having used the chair, and slunk through the corridors with open eyes and ears for her mistress. From somewhere in the palace there was a pounding rhythm that she could not identify. It wasn't really a rhythm, per se; just sounds, but it came from the center of the mansion. From a solid, but unlocked door.

And Pearl entered to see a fight.

The room was the largest she had seen yet in the mansion, with a soaring skylight of a roof and a steep pit that probably extended some meters into the ground. A safety railing circled the edge of the pit, just tall enough for Pearl to lean over and stare in rapt fascination at the scuffle below.

Aventurine stood in the pit alone, out of her loose tunic and in a newly clean military uniform and with her hair pulled back by a short green scarf. She held a strange chain with fist-sized weights on the end, swinging it in large loops at her side. Her one companion — opponent, Pearl should say — was a transparent blue figure twice Aventurine's size, speeding around the rounded walls of the pit. Aventurine never took her eyes off the hologram, turning when it did, all the while with her knees bent and body lowered.

With no warning, the hologram changed direction and plummeted towards Aventurine, so fast that wisps of light were left in its trail. Aventurine didn't hesitate. Roaring, she swung around and released the weighted chain, sending one end spinning towards the hologram. It slammed into the hologram's head, stuck there, and sent it sprawling. The threat was eliminated — but Aventurine's stance didn't relax yet.

Pearl soon learned why. The hologram had broken apart into five chunks on the floor, but the tiles underneath it began to glow and the chunks took new shapes. Suddenly, Aventurine faced not one large enemy but five, each about Pearl's height.

They charged and her quartz leapt into action again.

As Pearl watched, mesmerized by Aventurine's sheer power and speed, the practice fight quickened in pace. Floor tiles glowed and summoned more holographic enemies, each larger or faster than the last; and occasionally they slid back to reveal pits, pillars, spinning blades, ropes, water, or other hindrances that caused Aventurine to trip over her own feet dozens of times. But regardless of the number of enemies or severity of fall, she never stopped, and I believe that was the true magnificence of the scene — the raw determination that came to a quartz in a fight.

In any case, Pearl could have watched Aventurine all day. And she did. She was so enraptured in everything her quartz did that when the last hologram fizzled out and Aventurine let her stance drop, Pearl realized only too late that she was staring. It was too late because by the time she had, Aventurine crouched, sprang out of the pit into the air, and slammed onto the floor three paces from Pearl.

Pearl yelped. Aventurine whirled around in surprise, as if she had just realized Pearl was there. Maybe she had. In any case, both parties had been stunned past any sort of intelligible response, and when Aventurine asked "What are you doing?" and Pearl stammered apologies at the same time, neither knew how to respond. Both found sudden fascination with their feet.

As was quickly becoming the norm, Aventurine broke the silence first. She coughed (unnecessarily). "Well...I suppose, if you can find nothing better to do."

They stood in more lethal silence. The quartz rubbed the back of her neck, untied her scarf, let her hair down, and began fidgeting with the fabric as she turned away.

"I can hold that," Pearl found herself saying. Breath hitching in her throat, she took the scarf from Aventurine — the fabric was supple but elastic — and looked up in surprise when her mistress bowed her head.

"Thank you, Pearl," said Aventurine, "also for tending to the grounds. You're a little more talented than I expected."

The compliment made warmth bloom in Pearl's cheeks. "You don't have to thank me," she blurted. "I am made to suit your needs. It's my job."

"Your job?"

"My job is to know you, my Quartz."

Aventurine arched an eyebrow. The expression was cryptic but it was better to be safe than sorry. Pearl lowered her head again, but then the quartz said:

"Then you must know that you can't stop me from thinking something. Well, I think a pearl has earned as much praise for her labor as my soldiers have for theirs. Under my watch, every gem has a role, no gem gets left behind, and all gems shall be respected for the work they do. I hope you can accept that radical belief."

She kept her eyes locked on Pearl's the whole time, and placed her hand on Pearl's shoulder when finished.

"You do understand, correct?"

"Yes, my Quartz."

Aventurine steered her towards the exit. "Good," she nodded. "In that case, I appreciate your gardening and you may continue attending to it. But if you wish to serve me so badly, then I'll give you a job worth something. Perhaps some deskwork if you can manage. Did you find your answer, by the way? About the disturbance?"

It took a little while for Pearl to remember what she meant by the disturbance, but felt a little rush of excitement as she did. "Yes, they're caused by the shifting of tectonic plates! It's a little scary to think that we are standing on floating slabs of rock right now, but according to the logs, they're actually safer than a solid shell because planets need room to move around if they are undeveloped, like this one…"

Pearl relayed this information and then some, her soft lyrical voice brimming with sudden energy. She used her hands a lot when she explained things, in close, sharp movements to accentuate where her breathy cadence could not. I have always thought of her like a small bird.

And Aventurine watched and listened, and unbeknownst to Pearl — smiled just the faintest bit.

After Pearl had finished, her quartz set her to the deskwork, mostly tasks that Aventurine confessed to avoiding because they bored her, but which Pearl snatched up like a wallet of credits. She was allowed to sit in the big office chair. Albeit alone, but then she could sing. The work was repetitive, bland, and slightly morbid in places, especially in a batch of identification papers from deployed quartz units on Earth — at least those meant she could sit outside with Aventurine. Using a cute handheld data pad and stylus, Pearl would read off the gem's designation, deployment unit, shatter date and cause if available, and a security access code in the mysterious section labeled "Repurposing". Her job was to sort the files based on the code and consult with Aventurine if any sections were blank or otherwise inaccessible.

Come to think of it, those tasks weren't just bearable, because she found herself looking forward to them. They were... _nice._ They meant sitting on those platforms, occasionally on the side of the pool with her feet in the water, in the presence of her quartz as she relaxed for the day. At first Aventurine only allowed this when the task required some of her inside knowledge, but eventually, Pearl would stay in the courtyard for all her tasks, working in silent companionship as Aventurine sunbathed, read, or swam. A couple times — after noting the quartz's uncanny ability to remember every soldier that had walked under her command — a terse conversation would give way to an epic, heroic war story illustrated by the deep tones of Aventurine's voice and the dramatic sweeps of her hands.

Time passed even quicker than gardening like this; one day as Ferrade's tiny moon crossed the white-blue skies, Aventurine remarked that it had already been two months. Pearl asked what that meant; Aventurine explained that it meant half a standard year had gone by. Half a year versus the remaining one hundred...Pearl quailed before the thought that so much time could go by so fast.

"It only goes by faster as you grow older," Aventurine remarked, "in proportion to all the other years you've had. When we get to one hundred years, it will have seemed like all your life because it _was_ , for you. For myself — I might as well have taken a very long nap. One hundred years is insignificant."

And that remark really hadn't helped.

Other than the occasional awkwardness, which was just to be expected, Pearl found herself slipping easily into the role of…well…whatever she was. Aventurine didn't require much personal care, preferring to handle her appearance and comforts alone. The deskwork was quickly completed, leaving Pearl with time to care for the pod and garden, and when she wasn't doing that, Aventurine allowed her to research more about the nature of planets. She had become obsessed with the beryls' logs. She replayed the ones about seismic disturbances until she could recite them by heart, and then ventured deeper into the system for more. (To her delight there were seven hundred.)

As busy as she kept herself, she had developed a keen ear to Aventurine's actions, particularly the rhythms of her practice fights. The arena door opened louder than the other doors with a metallic _clank_. And when it did, Pearl would drop everything, race down the corridors, and find her place on the catwalk around the practice pit where she would stand and watch her quartz for hours.

Like a performance, Pearl mused once. Like a dance.

That day's performance was the longest and most perilous one yet. Pearl found herself chewing at the ends of her hair as Aventurine took a nasty slash to her leg and a terrible shot to the back that slammed her against the wall, but the quartz ignored it and charged at the holographic opponents again. Her chest and thigh poured a deep blue liquid that made Pearl nauseous. After the practice, she ran up to Aventurine with a towel and bandages, but the quartz only managed, "Forget about it, Pearl" before tripping on a bad step and vanishing in a puff of smoke.

Pearl knew what it was like to lose hold of her physical form, but she had never seen it happen to another gem. Startled, she flinched, then winced as Aventurine's gem clattered on the hard marble floor. As she slipped her fingers around it, she realized she had never seen it so up close before; and as it lay warm but inanimate in her hands, she saw it was a flat oval and twice the size of her own, and that it had tiny shining specks in it.

After a second of hesitation she decided to bring it to Aventurine's private alcove. There was _one_ problem with that solution, and that was Pearl had never dared set foot behind the curtain, and also that when she did, she realized that the place was a dump. The reclining platform was outfitted with about fifteen more pillows than it needed as well as a silken green-and-gold blanket in a tangled heap at the far end. The side tables seemed to be games of balance using plates, cups, and other varying utensils for food. (Pearl knew about food; there was a stock in a storeroom that had been steadily dwindling, and now she knew where Aventurine was taking it.) She stepped on at least three gold-tasseled pillows and a charging tablet on her way to the platform, and couldn't help but rearrange the pillows and blanket underneath Aventurine's gem.

She also cleaned the rest of the room because it had been bothering her.

Out of respect for her quartz's privacy, Pearl drew the curtain shut when she left, but nothing could stop her from opening it again and checking on Aventurine's gem periodically. She did this six times in the next five hours — and on the seventh was met with results, but the large form on the couch groaned an automatic _thank you but please leave me alone_. So she did.

Pearl left Aventurine alone for four days.

There was no definitive time that she "started worrying", because she was always worrying, and there was just a time when the worrying really picked up pace. It was after four straight days of standing vigilantly outside the curtain. Not _consistently_ — she did take time to straighten up, clean the pool, and check the garden's automated watering system before settling in her sentry post with her data pad. Even still, she was there enough to notice a pattern of noises from inside. There were absolutely no noises.

Finally she couldn't take it anymore. "My quartz?" Pearl called into the silence. She hadn't expected a reply and didn't get one, so she plucked at the curtain. The alcove hadn't changed since Pearl had cleaned it, except that the folded silk blanket was now pulled sloppily over Aventurine's broad shoulders.

The quartz had her back to the opening and she wasn't moving — Pearl couldn't tell which part made her more nervous. "Ah...Aventurine?" she tried again. Still no response.

A stronger emotion rose up alongside the worry; a panic that was like two hands wrapping around her neck. Trembling, she crossed the room and bent over her mistress's unmoving, vulnerable form, searching for any sign of damage, perhaps...a leftover wound from the practice battle? Did certain wounds have this effect on a quartz? Had something happened to her gem?

She inhaled sharply as she remembered the shot to Aventurine's back, a tiny hole between her shoulder blades, but in the center of her chest, a gaping maw with jagged edges. Pearl had to help her. Pearl had to do something, she had to save her quartz — so she reached out, took Aventurine by the shoulder, and tried to roll her body over.

We like to say there are no rules in Aventurine's pod, but that is incorrect. There is _one_ rule: do not wake a quartz before she wants to be woken up.

Pearl figured this out as she flew through the air, a large hand locked around almost the full circumference of her delicate waist — and then slammed into the ground. A furious quartz leaned over her, her weapon materializing in her free hand.

"WHO ARE — " Aventurine began in a ground-shaking bellow, but her eyes then locked on Pearl's and all her memories from the last two months poured back. The yell tapered off into a gravelly confession. "...You. Oh. Oh, schist. I'm so sorry."

She was still in shock from being driven into flat marble at speeds that would be illegal in urban areas, and squirmed as Aventurine tried to help her up. "I'm," she stammered, then winced as she turned against something that was probably badly bruised from the meeting with the ground. When she reached up to touch it with her fingertips, her upper back was tingling and numb.

Aventurine noticed the movement and grimaced. "I didn't intend to assault you," she explained, and (slower this time) gathered up Pearl's still-trembling body in her arms like the young gem weighed no more than a bundle of fabric. "I believe I hit you harder than you're allowed to endure. Here, I'll take you to your quarters."

And she did, setting Pearl gently down on her platform, instructing her to wait, and coming back with a bag of water.

"You don't need to do that, I can just reform," spilled Pearl all at once. Aventurine had moved behind the platform, behind Pearl, so she couldn't see her quartz, but the mixed condescension and care in her voice was clear even without nonverbal cues.

"Remember what I said about doing what I want? Now, I'm going to put this on your back, alright? It's cold but it will feel good. A couple bruises don't warrant reformation, anyway."

Aventurine slipped her gauzy sash down from her shoulder and then pressed the bag against Pearl's skin, sending another, lesser shock through her nerves that ended up feeling quite nice after a second. She mumbled a thank you. Aventurine didn't respond and silence permeated the short distance between them, a companionship not unlike that of the work days, except that in those it was Pearl working and Aventurine relaxing — not the other way around. Unsure of what to do, Pearl played with the hem of her skirt.

"What was…" she finally dared ask. Aventurine moved the large water pack down her back, to the less serious aches.

"What?"

Pearl hesitated. "Nothing."

"You mean my sleeping?"

The word didn't mean anything to Pearl.

"When I was lying down, you mean."

"Y...yes."

"That was sleeping."

"What is it?"

Aventurine mulled this question over for a while and moved the water pack up again. "It's a custom I learned on Earth," she responded, obviously choosing her words carefully. "You lie on your back in a comfortable area and stay still until you...stars, I don't know how to describe it, but it's wonderful. The indigenous species did it to conserve their energy. I believe many other carbon-based life forms also undergo this ritual, but earth creatures are by far the most attached to it. The ones I saw slept for at least half the day."

"But why don't...why can't you respond when you're...sleeping? Does it have amnesiatic properties?" She thought particularly back to how frightening her quartz had been when she had been aroused from her sleeping. It was as if a piece of the Aventurine from the training arena had been preserved in the Aventurine who slept.

"I suppose. When you sleep, it's like you've retreated into your gem, but there's nowhere to go. You forget because your mind isn't focused on your surroundings. It's not as scary as it sounds," she added. "It's actually very relaxing."

Pearl didn't think anything sounded more stressful than reclining supine without moving until surrendering to an abyss not unlike death.

"It was actually...one of the better things that came out of that miserable planet," Aventurine actually gave a half-chuckle. (The first in centuries.) "For a time, I acted as a double agent in the midst of the rebellion and that's where I learned it. I'll admit...I never agreed with Rose Quartz, but her appreciation for underprivileged life forms was not without merit. They had such a charming, childish culture."

"What happened to them?"

The water pack lifted off Pearl's skin. She turned to look at her quartz and saw that she had sat back on her heels, and stared out at the pool.

"I don't know what happened to them," Aventurine confessed, her voice suddenly low. "That wasn't my job. I only know that we got what we came for."

Pearl was about to ask what they had come for but then remembered the paperwork. The thousands upon thousands of shattered gems. One hundred twelve of them had been aventurines. She thought about the faces of these one hundred twelve aventurines, how they would never again stand before their Diamond as her own had boasted. She tried not to think about what kind of shards they would make — one hundred twelve gems just like the one she had held not long ago.

She failed and involuntarily bent over from nausea. Aventurine hadn't noticed, however, as she took the lull in the conversation to stand up and stretch. "I can't be wearing down," she remarked, rubbing her neck, "but I'm definitely getting older. Reformation doesn't help as much as it used to."

"So you sleep. To, er, conserve your energy," concluded Pearl. Her quartz looked at her with an eyebrow raised.

"Very good," said Aventurine, and then added, "I can show you how to sleep, you know. If you want to try."

Pearl's back straightened automatically and she blinked in surprise. "What?"

"Well, you've been running around for two months with hardly a break to sit down. I want you to rest."

Rest? "Ma'am, with all due respect — " Pearl tried to say, but then Aventurine reached under the couch and drew out a folded white blanket.

"No. Even if you don't want to sleep, you're going to have a rest," said her quartz stubbornly. With a dramatic flourish she shook the blanket out and let it float down over Pearl, nudging her into more of a reclining position with her free hand. "That's funny, though...you know those awful shade palms, yes?"

"Er…"

"There's a ton of their leaves under this couch, all rotting and dry. I wonder how they got there…"

(They had been so close. Pearl had been _so close_ to accepting the relaxation until Aventurine mentioned the leaves, and she vaulted off the couch so fast that the white blanket billowed back up in Aventurine's face. And Pearl swore for the first time in her life:)

 _"Schist!"_


	7. Elea

**Well. After eight months of silence, the story about bad luck is back. On Friday the 13th.**

 **Appropriate.**

* * *

 **VII. Elea — Worakls**

* * *

In a place that felt like nothing, Pearl stood on a pedestal.

It was very cold — not because she sensed it was cold, rather, that she simply _knew;_ as if someone had merely told her the temperature and left the rest up to her imagination. Her cropped hair and tiny silk dress whipped around her in a noiseless wind, threatening to pull her off her platter-sized platform. If she fell…

Shivering, Pearl wrapped her hands around her bare arms, turning her head towards the sky. She was sure it had been just a cloudy sky before, but suddenly she found herself lost in an infinite field of lights. Tiny lights, gold and white and pink and blue, spinning in a sea of velvety black, seemingly close enough to touch and yet just out of reach. _These are stars,_ she thought to herself — Aventurine had described them before, but no words could truly capture these. These exquisite things.

Three of them had begun to move — three opalescent lights blazing suddenly bright and drifting down from the night sky. But as they came closer she saw they weren't stars, they were _pearls —_ three white silhouettes who danced on the wind, translucent sashes fluttering around them as they spun. She hadn't known pearls could fly.

"Hello?" Pearl called.

All at once the wind vanished as if at Pearl's command, and the faceless pearls stopped their dance. She stared at them. They stared back. They began to move again, hovering into a group, leaning to whisper unheard things in each other's ear, and falling apart in perfect synchrony.

Then they swarmed.

Surprised, Pearl staggered back as the pearl-silhouettes flew at her, their ghostly hands pulled back to strike. But she had forgotten the pedestal. Her foot touched cold empty air, panic shot through her body, and the wind picked up again if only to push her from the edge.

As she fell she thought of a flash of light through her quartz's chest, of torn fabric and a bleeding hole the size of her own fist, of an explosion of light and smoke as a body gave way to nothing. And the clouds enveloped her.

She hit hard water and opened her eyes.

Aventurine was there, her face just above her own and her hands around Pearl's shoulders. Pearl's first thought was that she must have done something wrong, but Aventurine's expression was less angry and more…scared. What had happened? "Pearl. _Pearl_ ," Aventurine repeated insistently, and when Pearl's eyes locked onto hers, she effortlessly scooped up Pearl into her lap and turned the tiny gem to face her again.

"Pearl, look at me," said Aventurine, and though her eyes were full of tears, Pearl obeyed. "What you just saw wasn't real. You're safe. Do you understand?"

Pearl understood, but when she opened her mouth nothing came out. Only when Aventurine put a large hand behind her back did she realize that in all her numb trembling she was tipping backwards.

"Pearl, nod if you understand."

That was nice; she could manage a nod.

"You were having a dream," her quartz explained. "It's a vision that sometimes comes when you sleep. And they can be scary, but they're not real."

"You saw it?" Pearl whispered, confused.

"I didn't need to," Aventurine replied, gently shifted Pearl until the smaller gem found herself curled up in both of her quartz's arms, and hesitantly began to rock her back and forth. The action, though unexpected, was quite soothing. A sigh slipped unbidden out of her mouth. Then she found Aventurine examining her, face inscrutable.

"Do…you want to talk about it?" the quartz asked.

Pearl thought back to the lights in the sky, the faceless pearls, the explosion of light and smoke. She shook her head and said instead, "I am never sleeping again."

"It's not always like that," Aventurine put in, as if defending the art of sleep. Considering how much she loves it, I am not surprised to know that that was, in fact, the case. "Well, for me at least. I don't know how it works for other gems. I…don't talk to many other gems often."

She coughed sheepishly and then added, "Anymore. At, er, all."

Pearl reflected that it was getting progressively more difficult to understand Aventurine with every corollary that the quartz introduced to her about the vacationer's life. "That was a. Er. Joke," Aventurine prompted, making an odd expression. Her lips pressed together and her blue eyes darted away.

"What is 'joke'?" asked Pearl sincerely.

Aventurine opened her mouth to answer and Pearl prepared to take mental notes. Then her quartz responded, "I have no idea."

That seemed to settle it — whatever "it" was. Awkwardly, Pearl uncurled from Aventurine's arms and stepped down. While she was sleeping, or perhaps before that when she had been slammed quite surprisingly against the ground, she had shifted back into her original work dress. In fact, every time she changed into her short dress, she would hit a limit where she felt stretched out and tense, or she would lose her focus and shift out unconsciously. It was getting annoying. She did know that she could change appearance modifiers permanently if she was poofed — she hadn't ever deviated from her simple work dress, but she knew it was an option, as she had just noticed Aventurine wearing a pair of fingerless gloves that hadn't gone away.

But she didn't exactly feel like poofing herself now, so she simply shifted back into the short green dress and sash and turned towards Aventurine.

"Is there anything more you wish from me, my Quartz?"

The larger gem had been staring at her. Not obviously, but enough that she sat up too fast when Pearl turned around. "Nothing at the moment," she replied distantly, "you may attend to whatever you find."

The phrase "you may attend to whatever you find" had become a common one between the two. For Pearl, it meant exactly what it said. For Aventurine, it meant, "I can't remember anything for you to do because I am sadly incapable of working through basic tasks such as self-care and home ownership." It was effective enough. Pearl wasn't sure if she appreciated the freedom of choice or not. On one hand, it meant that Aventurine wouldn't act angry if she spent a standard day in the gardens while the pools were still dirty. On the other hand, Pearl wasn't sure if Aventurine was actually mad about those sorts of things and simply chose to hide it, so she still felt the urge to prioritize.

To solve this overwhelming dilemma, Pearl had developed a schedule. When told to do whatever she found, she would move in order of importance. First the sleeping quarters, the pools, the kitchens (though these were almost always clean, as Aventurine ate much of her food straight from the packages), the training pit, the hallways, the gardens, and finally the office. The office was last only because Pearl could spend many blinkless hours at the blue screens, and it was good to only run that risk when there was enough time to do so.

That wasn't to say, however, that she didn't get distracted within her other tasks, too. Aventurine will tell you all about the time Pearl was missing for almost two standard days before being found lying on her stomach in the gardens, playing with a tiny native organism that could crawl over Pearl's fingers forever without getting tired.

In my opinion it was adorable.

I'm losing track of myself here, though; that event had happened long before and isn't relevant now. I'm notoriously capricious. But I get bored of telling this story sometimes because it wasn't quite linear, or if it was, it was _stretched —_ things didn't happen one after the other like I would want them to, as it would be convenient. Nothing happened after Pearl woke up. Nothing immediate. She got up and cared for the pod, that was it; meanwhile, Aventurine took a nap of her own. It's incredibly draining, you know, to watch someone else sleep.

The important thing didn't happen until a few days later (Aventurine says four; Pearl says nine. I am inclined to believe Pearl on numbers, however). In between these two points in time, Pearl had observed that the blue skies had glossed over into a soft grey.

When asked, Aventurine responded, "The cloud layer is thickening" before going back to her activity — which was, at the time, swimming. In a flicker of light, the quartz shifted out of her default uniform and into a skintight black appearance modifier before lowering herself into the courtyard pool. She settled on a ledge and took up the beverage she had set down earlier, a sparkling scarlet liquid in a cone-shaped glass.

"Could be a weather pattern," continued Aventurine, sipping her drink. At this, Pearl frowned.

"What is a 'weather'?"

"Look it up."

Like "attend to whatever you find", this was a code phrase to signify that Aventurine had no clue. Pearl was, therefore, allowed to use the computer and research. Pleased, she turned and began to make her way to the office...she did remember a file labeled "Earthen weather patterns". And Ferrade did have certain similarities with Earth, such as its propensity for —

Just as she thought of the thing, it knocked her off her feet. Literally.

She had been walking through the door when it happened, meaning that as she went through the curtains, she fell back through them a second later and landed on her side. The world was shaking again. Past the overwhelming roar and her hands clamped over her ears, Pearl heard Aventurine swear, but she didn't dare move from the shaking ground where she lay. There was nothing to hold onto except fragments of the beryls' reports, repeating like a broken transmitter in her mind. This was a seismic disturbance. Simply plates shifting against each other. Nothing to be worried about…this was a seismic disturbance…simply plates shifting against each other…

And again, it stopped all at once.

Nothing to be worried about.

Aventurine picked her up. She very much liked to pick people up, Pearl reflected, as she had begun to pick up Pearl at almost every given opportunity. She liked to feel strong. In Aventurine's words, it was quartizine instinct — she was very old, even for a gem, meaning she had been around since gems hatched from buried geodes and still possessed the protective, maternal constructs of the day.

In my words, it was crippling insecurity plus a need for validation.

Either way Pearl didn't mind, because she liked being carried just as much as Aventurine liked carrying. Also, aftershocks. She had read about them in the beryls' reports. The last seismic disturbance hadn't had them, but this one did. On the way to the office, an aftershock rippled through the ground with enough force to have knocked Pearl over again, had she been standing. Aventurine swayed a little and swore.

The newscaster gem was back on the screen (she had appeared several other times for non-seismic related news, and Pearl had come to know her as Ulexite 2-3O9). " _Addressed to All Homeworld Citizens Stationed on Crystal System 33 Ferrade_ ," she stated, and commenced her announcement. It was virtually the same report as last time, save new information that the disturbance was Category 4 with minor architectural damage near the epicenter. The epicenter, Pearl was very displeased to know, was just a klick east of the pod.

"System, check for pod structural damage," she offered up to the computer. Her cheeks flushed as Aventurine looked down at her. "Sorry."

Like it always did, the computer obeyed her voice despite the added word, and a short list of minor fissures and instabilities popped up. Aventurine looked at them and Pearl again. Her bushy eyebrows furrowed. "How did you do that?"

"Ma'am?"

"The thing," Aventurine said descriptively. "How you made it do things without touching it."

"Oh." Pearl relaxed. Good question, she could answer it. "Kind of…like… System, open voice control settings. Add new voice recognition preset."

A new window opened, titled _Voice Recognition Preset 2._ After a second, text appeared and read _Voice 2, State Your Name._

Again, Aventurine looked down to Pearl in bewilderment. Pearl knew she couldn't speak or the computer would get confused, so she just nodded. Aventurine kept staring. Pearl waved her hand.

Finally, her quartz said to the computer, "Aventurine Facet 1S7K, Cut 3YA."

The computer took a second to load and then responded, _Welcome, Aventurine. Ask me anything._

"That's weird," Aventurine said.

"Yes, but it's handy," Pearl replied. "What do you want to ask it?"

The quartz took a second to think, then asked, "Can you tell me apart from other aventurines."

The computer did not respond, and it did not respond for two reasons — Aventurine's failure to address the system and her nasty habit of saying all questions like statements. "You have to ask _it_ if you need a question answered, _"_ explained Pearl, even though she knew it wasn't much of an explanation, but it made sense to her. "Like…sort of like…System, can you tell my voice apart from the voices of other pearls?"

Again the computer spent a moment composing itself, then it answered: _Yes. Every pearl is designed with a flexible vocal undertone that will gradually match to that of her owner. From the inflections in your voice, I estimate that you are a Tahitian pearl, property of an aventurine for under one standard year. Further analysis suggests that you may be in the care of General Aventurine Facet 1S7K, Cut 3YA, who recently registered into Voice Recognition Preset 2._

The computer waited in silence. "That's weirder," Aventurine remarked.

Pearl agreed, it was weird, and she especially wasn't sure what to think about the flexible vocal undertone part. That was somehow unnerving.

A notification popped up on the bottom of the screen — a gate breach, Pearl saw. Someone had gotten in. Not forcefully, meaning they had a functional ID, which was probably what the numbers at the bottom of the notification were. She looked to Aventurine for guidance. "So it's the Beta Jasper," the quartz mused after glancing at the numbers. "A temporary assistant of mine from the Earth war," she explained shortly to Pearl. "But this is my pod, why does it just let her in like that? And what the blithering blue blazes is she doing here?"

Aventurine suddenly turned and rushed out of the office, leaving Pearl to jog haplessly in her wake. Another gem inside the pod? She hadn't thought of the idea, but it did make sense that a gem of Aventurine's importance would have visitors. "Maybe she just wanted to say hello?" Pearl suggested, even while knowing it wasn't a satisfying answer. Aventurine kept her rapid pace and, as Pearl watched, fixed her hair and uniform in a single glow.

"A nice thought, but she's got a job. She wouldn't be here unless she needed something…I'm forgetting something, I know I am."

They crossed the threshold of the pod and emerged into the sunlight, filtered and made dreary by the darkening clouds. Between the grey light and the green gardens, the visitor stood out like a beacon. For stars' sakes, she was bright orange. Wider and curvier than Aventurine, but minutely shorter, Pearl saw she came closer. Still intimidating. Aventurine stopped at the top of the front steps, examined the stranger just as Pearl was, and then called out to her.

"I thought Homeworld declared me dead and not open to visitors," she said. The jasper climbed the stairs, taking them two at a time just as Aventurine often did. Pearl found herself shrinking back.

"If you were dead, I'd have grudges against _two_ alien populations," Jasper responded, smiling humorlessly. "How's the headache?"

"Back with a vengeance," sighed Aventurine. "I'm still finding glitter where it shouldn't be."

"Those khaoi are too much."

"Tell me about it."

Jasper chuckled. She had curious patterns on her skin, Pearl observed, like bright scars, but almost decorative. Several on her arms, one across her face; Pearl wondered if she had seen another gem like that as the stripes looked familiar — then remembered that she had. The quartz in Mother's office, the one who had made Mother so angry. She met Jasper's intense gold eyes.

"Who's that?" Jasper asked, the corner of her mouth quirking up. Pearl resisted the urge to slink more behind Aventurine, and made sure to straighten her back when her quartz stood to the side. Nudging her closer to Jasper, Aventurine kept her hand on Pearl's shoulder.

"My pearl."

Jasper's eyes were wide as she scanned Pearl from bottom to top, making Pearl fidget. She had just remembered she was wearing her work dress, not her short nice one, but wasn't sure if it would be proper to shift into it with another quartz watching. No, she decided as Jasper met her eyes again. It definitely wouldn't be.

And it wouldn't matter — Jasper had already begun to laugh.

"That — that's a _pearl?!"_ she snorted. "Oh, stars, Nacre really pulled one out on you. Tough luck."

Pearl suddenly began to wish she had never followed Aventurine outside. Her quartz's grip on Pearl's shoulder stiffened minutely.

"Soldier, you _will_ watch your place," Aventurine snapped, and the grin on Jasper's face vanished.

"Wait. All due respect General, I don't think you understand. Look at her — she's defective inside and out, you can't hide it. General Amethyst is gonna have a fit when she sees her."

Aventurine's hand left Pearl's shoulder and she folded her arms. "Who says Amethyst is going to see her?"

"Haven't you been reading your mail?"

"Absolutely not."

"That's a problem."

"I'm aware. What's this about Amethyst?"

"Well, since you failed to check back in to the authorities after you were pronounced dead, and you ignored all your alerts, we had to trust witness accounts and clean up the khaoi mess ourselves. So Amethyst's gonna talk to you about that and she sent me ahead to make sure you had preparations in order, a warp pad set up and all that."

"Preparations?"

"She's expecting a dinner, sir. Full honors and entertainment."

Aventurine went quiet, then said deadpan, "That _is_ a problem."

Both quartzes ended up looking at Pearl, making her feel quite small indeed. "She… _can_ function, right?" Jasper asked. "I…ah…expect that she could take on some of the preparations, but…it's a problem if…"

Aventurine gave her a look. "It's none of your concern, that's what it is."

Jasper's face was quickly turning into all of one color. "Of course, ma'am. But the general's gonna want an answer, and you want me to tell her — "

"Tell her that the other, older, wiser general says, 'Come and see it for yourself'. Am I clear, Jasper?"

"Yes, general."

"Did you have anything else to run my ears off for?"

"Warp pad."

"Not gonna get one."

"It's procedure, ma'am. You need at least one installed."

"No."

Jasper seemed to be deflating more with every response of Aventurine's. "You have a nearly life-size statue of Yellow Diamond on your fountain, yet you can't be bothered to install a warp pad."

"If I installed a warp pad I'd have to move the fountain."

"Then put it on your lawn!"

"It would be asymmetrical. Goodbye, Jasper."

"Ma'am. You need a warp pad."

"Not in this weather, youngster."

"Excuse me?"

"Excuse _me,_ Jasper. Didn't you feel the awfully large seismic disturbance not five minutes ago? I'm not trusting these fancy-schmancy tech pads. One of those quakes hit while warping and I could end up on the dark side of the planet."

"Warp pads have been around for eons, General, they don't just break — "

"And I've been around longer than warp pads, but I break down about twice a day. I don't want one."

"Listen — "

Aventurine put her hand on Pearl's shoulder and steered her back towards the pod. "I'm going back inside now, Jasper."

"Ma'am."

"Have a nice day."

Jasper didn't respond. Craning her head over her shoulder, Pearl wanted to see what the orange gem was doing, but Aventurine's massive form was in the way as her quartz shuffled her impatiently into the pod. Only once they returned to the main courtyard, far from Jasper, did Aventurine release her. Her face was rapidly approaching blue.

"I can't believe it," Aventurine fumed, "her _nerve!"_

Pearl wasn't sure what her quartz classified as nerve but agreed anyway. "Indeed, my Quartz."

"Quit calling me that." She had begun to pace, her heavy boots pounding on the stone floor. "And it's not all Jasper — well, she pissed me off plenty, but she's just the messenger. It's Amethyst I need a word with. I told her I don't want to talk, isn't that enough? This is _my_ furlough, not hers. If she wants, she can piss me off as much as she wants once my hundred years are over, but before that? Demanding for _me_ to host her in _my_ pod and putting _me_ at blame when I don't want her in? Absolutely NOT! You see?! She's completely void of discipline, Pearl. Back in my day, you couldn't simply SHOW UP at someone else's home and expect them to provide you with food; no, you asked beforehand and you asked it NICELY because Era Zero quartzes weren't CLODS. And CERTAINLY, once you got permission, you didn't insult your host's pearl. And can't she get it through her gem, is she SO self-important that she can't care to respect her elders — gems that were fighting for her freedom while her half-baked core napped in some pretty little kindergarten?! APPARENTLY SO, Pearl. Apparently so."

Initially, Pearl shrank back from the furious quartz, but as Aventurine kept going, it was apparent that the rage was relatively harmless. Venting, like always — just louder. "I understand, my Quartz."

"I told you. Stop calling me that."

"Oh." Yes, she did recall now. "Sorry…Aventurine."

Aventurine looked at her curiously, then made a huff that sort of resembled a laugh. "Heh. That's better. How we did it in the old days, you know."

"Old days?"

Practically an invitation to get over her bad mood. Aventurine loved telling stories. She sat down beside Pearl on the reclination platform and nodded. "Before the Kindergartens, some call it Era Zero, we had geodes, and our carriers would just stick us in the ground."

"Where do the geodes come from?"

Both of them were getting invested in the story until then, when Aventurine's eyes widened and she turned a remarkably darker shade of green. "Ah… _well_. Ahem. That's a lesson for later. When you're older."

"Mother said we don't have real ages."

"Well, Nacre's full of slag. That aside. You see, she's like me, she'd remember, there used to not be as many gems anywhere. There weren't _pearls_. There weren't _jaspers,_ or _rose quartzes,_ even _aventurines._ It was just Nacre, Jasper, Aventurine. Finding another one just like you was pretty odd. And you'd use a different name for them if you did. Like me, there were two other gems who called themselves Aventurine on my entire planet — I called 'em Fanny and Cone. They called me Shoe. But everyone else called me just Aventurine. No titles. None of this 'General' or 'Your Clarity' nonsense."

"You…called yourselves Aventurines?" That in itself made no sense. Like Aventurine had just popped out of the ground, looked at herself, and gave herself a gem type that she liked.

"We didn't exactly have Kindergarteners to tell us what we were," Aventurine shrugged. "We just used old records and guessed. For all I know, I could be a very large, aggressive jade. But when they figured out how to mass produce gems, it's also when they got the identification tricks down, so that's why there's never any doubt. And why we have numbers instead of names."

Her deep voice faded out by the end, and she looked at her feet. She was…sad, Pearl realized. Mother had never taught her what to do if her Quartz — that is, if Aventurine ever got sad. The idea was that if Pearl did her job right, Aventurine would never be. But this was something she didn't know how to fix.

"Would it help," she tried, "if I called you…Shoe?"

Aventurine seemed taken aback by this, but then she chuckled. "I don't think it would, I'm sorry, Pearl. Aventurine's fine."

But there was something dawning on her face now, something akin to inspiration.

"Although…I know an awful many pearls. You could have a name."

Pearl's eyes widened. "Oh," she murmured. She had never thought of a name. Well, she didn't even know gems _could_ have names until a few minutes ago. "What kind of name?"

Aventurine stood up and stroked her chin, looking Pearl up and down. "Hmm," she mused, "any kind of name you want. It needs to fit at least." That generated more questions than it answered. "What if _you_ were called Shoe?"

"I don't wear shoes," Pearl pointed out.

"True. You probably should. Hmm…Green, maybe…no, we're both green. Though you're more of a dark, iridescent aqua. Oh — Aqua, perhaps…no _._ Ugh. Why am I picking your name? You should be doing it. It's your name."

"I don't know how to pick names."

"Just…think about yourself. Things about you. Pick a word. Or shorten another one. Make one up. Wait, c'mere." Roughly, but not unkindly, like a great beast trying to handle fine china, Aventurine pulled Pearl up by the arm and led her to the pool at the center of the courtyard. The water was still and glassy, reflecting the white sky above, and then Aventurine and Pearl.

"I dunno…look at yourself," Aventurine said quite vaguely.

Pearl obeyed, meeting her reflection's bright blue eyes. She expected a kind of epiphany, a sudden realization of her name as soon as she looked in the water, but it was just water. With all her might, she focused on the mirror image. She was still in her work dress, unadorned, down to her ankles. Her hair was messy from the recent earthquake. _Simple_ came to mind. But that was an adjective. Absentmindedly, she shifted to her short dress, and fingered the gold ring around her stout waist. She looked down further, past the reflection, to the gem on her foot. Three rings. _Ring_ , maybe? No, not that either.

She thought harder. Herself. She didn't know much about herself. She was just a Tahitian pearl. Tahitian. Named after a strange Earth island, allegedly designed to comfort Earth veterans. She did not know what this Tahiti was, nor why it was tacked to her gem type. But it did sound nice. Tahiti…too long…Tahi, maybe…but it could be better…

"Tai," she said suddenly, and looked at Aventurine for approval. "Can my name be Tai?"

It was said a little like _tie_ but not spelled like it, though Aventurine probably didn't know that. She couldn't spell. That might have been why she gave her such a weird look.

"Sure, if you like," Aventurine said. "Tai. It's nice."

The compliment made Tai beam. Even more was the devious half-smile that twitched at Aventurine's face as an idea came to life.

"I know," she said, leaning down as if to tell Tai a secret. "You have a name now. General Amethyst hates that — we've got in actual fights about cuts and facets and all that. Why don't we welcome her _our_ way? Era Zero style. That way, when she barges in like she does, we can just say that it's our pod, and if she wanted things a certain way she should've hosted this hoopla at her own pod. How about that?"

"I understood about twenty percent of that sentence," said Tai, but smiled anyway because Aventurine seemed quite happy now. Grinning widely and showing off her overlarge canine teeth, Aventurine scooped Tai up in her arms.

"That's okay, Tai. I'll explain as we go. Now…we have spite to satisfy."

"Satisfying spite is good," Tai agreed. Aventurine nodded, and together they went down to the kitchens.

"It's certainly sweet," said Aventurine.


End file.
